Our Blog – Elizma Lambert

Articles Detox Functional Testing Genes MTHFR

What Does a Low Homocysteine Result Mean?

Nobody asks about a low homocysteine result, because nothing on the report tells you to. The reference range only has an upper limit that matters, so a low number is…

Elizma LambertNovember 5, 2026

Articles Diets Food Sensitivities Gut Oxalates

Why Am I Reacting to More and More Foods?

The list starts short. Something obvious goes first, usually dairy or gluten. Then aged cheese and leftovers. Then berries and spices. Then almonds and spinach. Then garlic and eggs. By…

Elizma LambertNovember 2, 2026

Articles Diets Food Sensitivities Gut

Why Do Probiotics Make My Histamine Symptoms Worse?

Histamine intolerance is usually discussed as two things: the histamine in your food, and the histamine your own mast cells release. There is a third source, and it accounts for…

Elizma LambertOctober 30, 2026

Articles Diets Gut Mood Disorders

Why Does Iron Make Me Feel Worse, Not Better?

Low ferritin with a normal blood count is one of the most common findings in people with unexplained fatigue, and iron is the obvious answer. When it makes someone feel…

Elizma LambertOctober 27, 2026

Articles Diets Food Sensitivities Genes Gut Hormones Mood Disorders

Why Do My Histamine Symptoms Follow My Cycle?

If your headaches, hives, anxiety, bloating or insomnia arrive at the same two points every month, that timing is the most useful diagnostic information you have. It points at histamine,…

Elizma LambertOctober 27, 2026

Articles Food Sensitivities Genes Gut

Why Doesn’t DAO Help My Histamine Symptoms?

DAO supplements work for some people and do nothing for many others, and the reason is usually not the product. It's that DAO does one narrow job — breaking down…

Elizma LambertOctober 25, 2026

Articles Cancer Food Sensitivities Functional Testing Genes Gut Hormones Mood Disorders MTHFR

Why Does High Homocysteine Make Everything Worse?

Homocysteine is usually reported as a cardiovascular risk marker and then ignored if it's only mildly raised. That's a mistake, because a high homocysteine tells you something considerably more immediate:…

Elizma LambertOctober 24, 2026

Detox Food Sensitivities Genes Gut

Why Can’t I Tolerate Alcohol or Chemical Smells?

If a mouthful of wine gives you a headache, if perfume in a lift makes you feel ill, if you get hangover symptoms without drinking, the common factor is usually…

Elizma LambertOctober 23, 2026

Detox Genes Gut

Why Do the Right Supplements Make You Feel Worse?

If a nutrient you clearly need makes you feel worse within days of starting it, the usual conclusions are that you're intolerant to it, that it's a detox reaction, or…

Elizma LambertOctober 20, 2026

Genes Gut Mood Disorders The Brain

How Gut Bacteria Interfere With Your Brain Chemistry

Your gut bacteria make neurotransmitters. Not compounds that vaguely resemble them — the actual molecules, produced by bacterial enzymes doing the same chemistry your own cells do. That matters because…

Elizma LambertOctober 18, 2026

Articles Diets Food Sensitivities Gut Oxalates

Why Strict Anti-Candida Diets Can Backfire

Cutting sugar when you have a yeast overgrowth is reasonable. Cutting almost everything is where it stops working, and the reason sits in the organism's biochemistry. Candida is not dependent on…

Elizma LambertOctober 15, 2026

Articles Food Sensitivities Gut

SIBO: Why ‘Feed Your Good Bacteria’ Can Backfire

"Feed your good bacteria" is sound general advice — prebiotics like inulin genuinely nourish a healthy gut. But in small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO), that same advice can backfire. The…

Elizma LambertOctober 13, 2026

Articles Diets Gut

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

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