Paul is taking a break from the blog to contribute a chapter to a forthcoming book on the psychological and societal effects of AI. He will be back as soon as possible!
A short break!
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Leading scientist in the field of nutrition
Dr. Paul Clayton
Easter, 2026
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The hardcover edition of W.B. Yeats' A Terrible Beauty Is Born, published by Grapevine India, does not credit the cover illustrator as Indian publishing houses typically use anonymous in-house graphic designers. They should have made an exception for this one, an image which mingles the possibilities of birth...
My Left Foot (Redux)
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May 28th was a good day for me, I survived a potentially fatal accident. Some of the results are in the photo, above, where the expert eye might see not only the obvious dislocation but also a complete fracture of the left talus, Hawkins Grade 2. The talus...
AI Caramba!
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When Gemini, Claude or DeepSeek screen this blog they conclude that the science is reasonable and the writing adequate, but the conclusions are a bridge too far. They like it when I recommend eating a better diet, even though everybody knows that dietary education programs don’t work (ie...
The Sound of Food
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We eat with our ears. The noise of food – the crunch of an apple, the pour and fizz of a cold carbonated drink, the sizzle of bacon – is called sonic seasoning, and it adds to the experience of eating. Oxford professor Charles Spence developed this art...
Connecting the Dots
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*This is the last article Paul wrote before his accident. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible. **Regarding a recent post, 'Joining the Dots': legal issues have been resolved, and the post is now available in full. Older Istanbullular still talk about the winter of 1954....
Fish Oil is an UltraProcessed Food
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Sun Tzu may (or may not) have said, ‘If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by.’ A scientific version might read, ‘If you sit in the commons room long enough, the shades of your old ideas will float by.' This...
Everything Everywhere All at Once Pt 3. Microbiome connected to the funeral home
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This is the day of the expanding man (1). Governmental health policies have failed utterly to stem the aggressive marketing of addictive, toxic and calorie-dense foods, which is why the latest data show continuing human inflation. By 2050, if current trends persist, more than half of adults and...
Everything Everywhere All at Once Pt 2: microbiome connected to the metabolome
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A good friend sent me a truly fascinating recent paper which sheds new light on the old gut-brain connection (1). It focuses on the relationship between the endocannabinoids (eCBs) and tryptophan (and therefore serotonin) metabolism, all of which are profoundly affected by the microbiota. Clinical data ‘showed a...
Everything Everywhere All at Once Pt 1. Microbiome Connected to the Backbone
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The Gut – Disc axis is just another example of how everything in the body connects. The gut microbiota (which is well known to interact with dermal, placental, pulmonary and other microbiota, and to impact the liver, kidneys, cardiovascular system, brain etc), has now been shown to talk...