Articles – Elizma Lambert

Why Polyphenols Work Despite ‘Poor Bioavailability’

Polyphenols — the compounds in colourful plants, tea, coffee, berries, olive oil and cacao — are often dismissed as having "poor bioavailability," meaning very little of them reaches your bloodstream…

Elizma LambertOctober 11, 2026

Articles Diets Ketogenesis Ketogenic Diet Weight Loss

Fat Adaptation: Why It Takes Longer Than Two Weeks

Getting into ketosis takes a few days. Becoming genuinely "fat adapted" — where your body efficiently burns fat as its main fuel — takes much longer, usually somewhere between four…

Elizma LambertOctober 9, 2026

Articles Gut Mood Disorders The Brain

Why Amino Acid Supplements Can Backfire

Amino acids are the building blocks of protein, and supplementing them is usually helpful. But some people feel distinctly worse on an amino acid supplement — foggy, wired, irritable, headachy,…

Elizma LambertOctober 7, 2026

Articles Weight Loss

Why Exercise Burns Fewer Calories Than You Think

Exercise burns a much smaller share of your daily energy than most people assume. Your resting metabolism — the energy your body uses just staying alive — accounts for around…

Elizma LambertOctober 5, 2026

Articles Diets Weight Loss

Raw vs Cooked: The Calories You Actually Absorb

The calories you actually absorb from a food can change depending on whether it's raw or cooked — even though the number on a label stays the same. Cooking breaks…

Elizma LambertOctober 3, 2026

Articles Autism / Asperger's Genes Hormones MTHFR The Brain

Does BPA Exposure in Pregnancy Affect Autism Risk?

An Australian research team followed just over a thousand children from before birth and found that boys whose mothers had higher levels of the plastic chemical BPA late in pregnancy…

Elizma LambertOctober 2, 2026

Biochemical pathways and human connection

Articles MTHFR MTHFR and 23andme

Genetics pathways, not single genes

A gene variant read on its own tells you very little. What matters is where it sits in a sequence of reactions and what the variants around it are doing.…

Elizma LambertOctober 1, 2026

Addiction Articles Mood Disorders The Brain

PANDAS, the Basal Ganglia, and Look-Alike Symptoms

PANDAS — a sudden onset of tics, obsessive-compulsive behaviours and other neuropsychiatric symptoms in children after a streptococcal infection — is thought to involve the immune system affecting a specific…

Elizma LambertSeptember 29, 2026

Articles Genes Mitochondria MTHFR

Why Active Vitamin Forms Sometimes Feel Worse

"Active" or "methylated" vitamin forms are sold as strictly better — already converted, more bioavailable, more effective. For some people they are. But active forms are also more forceful: they…

Elizma LambertSeptember 27, 2026

Articles Opinion The Brain

Could AI Trained on Animal Brains Turn Against Us?

This month, the complete wiring diagram of a fruit fly's nervous system was released to the public, and within two weeks someone had used it to beat one of the…

Elizma LambertSeptember 26, 2026

Banner with different gut microbes and different calories absorbed

Articles Gut Weight Loss

Can Gut Bacteria Change How Many Calories You Absorb?

Two people can eat the identical meal and absorb different numbers of calories from it, partly because of the bacteria in their gut. The food that isn't digested in your…

Elizma LambertSeptember 25, 2026

Articles Hormones Thyroid Weight Loss

Why Your Metabolism Slows When You Cut Calories

When you cut calories, your body doesn't just burn its fat stores and carry on as normal. It reads the deficit as scarcity and lowers the rate at which it…

Elizma LambertSeptember 23, 2026

Articles ATP Science Project Weight Loss

Is Calories In, Calories Out Actually True?

"Calories in, calories out" isn't wrong, exactly — energy balance is real, and you can't escape physics. The problem is that it's treated as simple arithmetic when both sides of…

Elizma LambertSeptember 21, 2026

Female with inflammation affecting hormones

Articles Fertility Hormones The Brain Thyroid

Can Inflammation Cause Hormone Problems?

Yes. Inflammatory signalling molecules act directly on the hypothalamus and pituitary — the control centres sitting above your thyroid, adrenal and reproductive hormones. When inflammation is present, it changes the…

Elizma LambertSeptember 19, 2026

Articles Fertility Functional Testing Genes Hormones Menopause

Oestrogen Metabolites, COMT and What’s Ideal

How much oestrogen you have matters, but how you break it down matters just as much. Oestrogen is metabolised down three main routes, and they aren't equal: one is relatively…

Elizma LambertSeptember 16, 2026

Articles Thyroid

Why a Normal TSH Doesn’t Always Mean a Healthy Thyroid

A normal TSH is reassuring, and most of the time it does mean the thyroid is fine. But TSH measures one specific thing — how much the brain (pituitary) is…

Elizma LambertSeptember 13, 2026

Articles Functional Testing

Can You Be Deficient With a Normal Blood Test

A blood test tells you what's in your blood. It doesn't necessarily tell you what's inside your cells — and for many nutrients, that's where they actually do their work.…

Elizma LambertSeptember 10, 2026

Articles Hormones Mitochondria The Brain Thyroid

What Does Low T4 With Normal TSH Mean?

A low or low-normal T4 alongside a normal TSH is an unusual combination, because the two normally move in opposite directions. When T4 falls, TSH should rise to compensate. If…

Elizma LambertSeptember 7, 2026

Articles Hormones Mood Disorders The Brain Thyroid

Can Thyroid, Adrenal or Hormone Problems Cause Depression and Anxiety?

Yes — several physical conditions produce symptoms that are difficult to distinguish from depression and anxiety, including low thyroid function, depleted adrenal output, androgen-dominant hormone patterns, and ongoing inflammation. This…

Elizma LambertSeptember 4, 2026

Articles MTHFR MTHFR and 23andme

Why methylfolate feels worse

Feeling worse on methylfolate — anxious, wired, irritable, headachy, unable to sleep — is common enough that it's one of the most frequent questions asked about the supplement. There are…

Elizma LambertSeptember 1, 2026

Articles Detox Gut Hormones

How Bile and Gut Bacteria Affect Oestrogen Clearance

Once your liver has finished with oestrogen, it packages it for disposal and sends it out in bile, into the gut, to be excreted. But that's not always the end…

Elizma LambertAugust 29, 2026

Articles Detox Gut Metabolic Syndrome Oxalates

Why Digestion Changes After Gallbladder Removal

Digestive problems after gallbladder removal are common, real, and frequently missed. Without a gallbladder, bile drips into the intestine continuously instead of being stored and released in a timed dose…

Elizma LambertAugust 26, 2026

Articles MTHFR

Why supplements stop working

A supplement that worked and then stopped usually hasn't gone bad and you haven't built up a tolerance to it in the way people assume. The more common explanations are…

Elizma LambertAugust 23, 2026

Articles Cardiovascular Genes Gut Hormones Menopause Metabolic Syndrome The Brain

Menopause, Cholesterol and Bile: Why You Feel Different

If digestion, cholesterol, weight and memory all seemed to shift after menopause, you're not imagining it, and it isn't just "getting older." Oestrogen quietly supports several systems at once: it…

Elizma LambertAugust 20, 2026

Articles Detox Gut Hormones Oxalates

What Are the Signs of Sluggish Bile?

The most recognisable signs of sluggish bile are digestive: discomfort or nausea after fatty meals, bloating, pale or greasy stools that float and are hard to flush, and loose stools.…

Elizma LambertAugust 16, 2026

Banner for primary and secondary bile acids

Articles Gut Metabolic Syndrome Weight Loss

Primary vs Secondary Bile Acids: Why It Matters

Primary bile acids are the ones your liver makes. Secondary bile acids are what your gut bacteria turn them into after they reach the intestine. The difference matters because the…

Elizma LambertAugust 13, 2026

Articles Functional Testing Gut Mood Disorders MTHFR Organic Acid Test Oxalates

What Is an Organic Acid Test and What Can It Actually Tell You?

An Organic Acid Test (OAT) measures metabolic byproducts in urine — compounds left over from energy production, neurotransmitter turnover, detoxification, and the activity of bacteria and yeast in the gut.…

Elizma LambertAugust 10, 2026

Articles Diets Food Sensitivities Gut

Which Foods Contain Fructans, Gluten, or Both?

Gluten and fructans are different things that live in mostly the same foods. Gluten is a protein. Fructans are a chain of fructose molecules — a carbohydrate — and they…

Elizma LambertAugust 9, 2026

Articles Gut

Why Sluggish Bile and SIBO Feed Each Other

Sluggish bile and small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO) tend to occur together, and each one worsens the other. Bile is antimicrobial — it's one of the things that keeps the…

Elizma LambertAugust 7, 2026

Articles Gut Weight Loss

Why Bile Imbalances Make Weight Loss Harder

If weight is far harder to shift than your diet and activity would predict, one under-recognised reason is bile acid signalling. Bile acids trigger the release of GLP-1 — the…

Elizma LambertAugust 4, 2026