Welcome to The Rise – your weekly dose of circadian sunshine, decentralised health wisdom, and actionable tips to help you live healthier, stronger, and more empowered.

In the last 12 months, the 5,600+ people in this tribe have been reading something the other 99% of health newsletters won’t cover — the science your GP hasn’t read. Here’s what’s in this week’s issue and why it matters…

• The latest American Heart Association’s guidelines on cholesterol and what it means for you
• Is “high” cholesterol such a bad thing after all? And what the longest living humans can tell us about this
• Big food companies just invented a label that sounds medical, but means absolutely nothing. What is it?
• And in a world of prescriptions, how you can choose nature as medicine instead

Have suggestions or something you’d love to see covered here? Help me better serve this vibrant community of health rebels and send me your feedback here.

Much love and sunshine, ☀️

Sandy xx

Issue #115 • 12 April, 2026

🌅 Rise Report

The AHA Just Changed Statin Guidelines. Here’s What That Means for You

Imagine being 30 years old, walking into your doctor’s office feeling completely fine – perhaps you have a cold or a bumped something. Before you know it, you’ve had your bloods taken and you’re walking out with a prescription for a condition you may not face for another 30 years.

That’s no longer hypothetical. The brand new 2026 American College of Cardiology & American Heart Association Cholesterol Guidelines, released in March, backed by 11 major medical bodies and coming to a doctor’s surgery near you, have officially lowered the age for cholesterol screening and potential statin treatment from 40 to 30.

If you’re in your thirties with an LDL above 160 mg/dL or a high 30-year cardiovascular risk score, statins are now on the table. A lifetime prescription – even before your frontal lobe has even finished developing.

The stated rationale is to reduce your “lifelong exposure” to LDL cholesterol — treating it like a cumulative poison in your system rather than, say, the molecule your body uses to build hormones, protect your brain, and repair cellular damage. On paper, it looks like prevention. But preventing what?

Statins are not without their trade-offs: muscle pain, fatigue, lower libido and an increased risk of type 2 diabetes are all well-documented side effects. And then there’s the quieter cost. One cannot underestimate the measurable decrease to quality of life when taking a pill every day. The shift from feeling well to being labelled “at risk” is real.

The decentralised wisdom? Before your next blood test result becomes a prescription, ask your doctor to also check your triglyceride and insulin levels. Both are far more predictive of cardiovascular risk than LDL alone, and curiously, there’s no blockbuster drug designed to lower either of them. Funny, that.

The Longest-Lived Humans on Earth Have “High” Cholesterol

Here’s a question worth sitting with: if high cholesterol were truly the villain it’s made out to be, why do so many of the world’s longest-lived people seem to have it?

A study published in Nutrients in February 2025, which analysed a community in the well known Blue Zone of Sardinia, Italy, found that nonagenarians (aged 90+) with LDL cholesterol levels above 130 mg/dL lived significantly longer than those with lower LDL levels. This phenomenon, often called the “cholesterol paradox” in the elderly, suggests that in older people, higher LDL may not act as a risk factor, but rather a protective resource for immune function and cellular repair.

In a separate Swedish study tracking 44,000 individuals over 35 years, it found that those who reached age 100 were less likely to have had very low cholesterol in their 60s, 70s and 80s compared to their shorter lived peers. Looks like longevity and low cholesterol don’t always go hand in hand.

The takeaway? Just because a health position has been well marketed and sold, it does not mean we should follow blindly. Everyone needs to do their own research and decide what’s best for them. In my opinion, your metabolic health, triglycerides, inflammation levels, and insulin sensitivity matter far more than your total cholesterol so keep eating those organic eggs!

Big Food Just Invented a Food Label That Means Absolutely Nothing. Coming to a Pizza Box Near You.

If you thought the GLP-1 craze couldn’t get any crazier, it just has. Nestle, Conagra (maker of the Healthy Choice brand) and a growing queue of big food brands are now targeting the estimated 12% of US adults taking weight-loss drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy, or Zepbound with a brand new food label: “GLP-1 Friendly”.

Image source: npr.org

The packaging implies these foods are specially curated, nutritionally sound and a great complement to your weekly injection. Honestly? That sentence alone is a sad reflection on where our society has got to. We now have enough people taking GLP-1 drugs that major food corporations have built an entire marketing category around them. So what’s next? Statin Friendly foods? Don’t laugh – the playbook may already be written.

But here’s the kicker: there is no regulated or medically defined standard for what “GLP-1 Friendly” actually means. No official definition, no certification body, no independent review. Big brands can print a little tick on a box with whatever words they like, and enough people will assume it’s official.

Then there’s the small matter of what’s actually in these products. We’re largely talking about ultra-processed foods loaded with artificial colours, flavours, stabilisers, and ingredients ready to send your inflammatory and insulin markers haywire before you can say “how long do I microwave this for.”

And if you’re sitting there wondering…just why? Here’s the logic that’s apparently driving this. GLP-1 drugs suppress appetite, so people eat roughly 50% less, meaning companies are now making their products more “nutrient-dense” to compensate and so that every bite counts. But hang on. If food companies had made genuinely nutrient-dense food to begin with, and people ate less because they were actually satiated, rather than having their palates hijacked by scientifically engineered combinations of salt, sugar and flavours, perhaps nobody would need the drugs in the first place.

And the merry-go-round doesn’t end there. Research shows roughly 30% of people who start GLP-1 medications quit within sixth months, and 50 – 65% within a year, only to watch the weight return, and at the expense of muscle mass they’ll struggle to rebuild. No food label is going to fix that.

And as for the foods that could legitimately carry a “GLP-1 Friendly” label? Eggs, quality meat, locally grown vegetables. But they don’t come in boxes and they don’t have labels. And that’s the whole point.

The decentralised wisdom? Real food doesn’t need a pharmaceutical branded sticker to be nourishing.

P.S And if you want a reminder of what GLP-1 is (hint: your body makes it) and how to switch GLP-1 on naturally, you can check out our previous coverage here and here. Trust me, no injections required!!

🤓 Smarty Pants

Cholesterol: The Molecule of Life

Here’s something nobody put in the health class curriculum: cholesterol isn’t a rogue substance clogging your arteries. It is one of the most essential molecules in your entire body, and your body makes the majority of it itself, because it simply cannot afford not to.

Every one of your 37 trillion cells has a membrane partly built from cholesterol, without it, your cells lose their structural integrity and flexibility. Even your mitochondria, the powerhouses of every cell, require cholesterol to function. Your steroid hormones, testosterone, oestrogen, progesterone, cortisol, are all built on a cholesterol backbone. Drop your cholesterol too low and your hormonal balance suffers. Men, that means your testosterone!

Your skin uses cholesterol to synthesise vitamin D when sunlight hits it. Your liver converts it into bile acids to digest fats and absorb the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K. And your brain, which is roughly 60% fat by dry weight, is absolutely loaded with it, relying on cholesterol to build the myelin sheaths around nerve fibres and support every synapse you fire. As metabolic scientist and Professor of Cell Biology Dr Benjamin Bikman puts it:

“Cholesterol is a molecule of life.”

 

So why does LDL, the so-called “bad” cholesterol, get treated like such a villain? The honest answer is that it’s a convenient target, not necessarily the right one.

LDL isn’t just a delivery vehicle for arterial plaque – it’s also an active player in your immune system, helping your body fight infection. The real trouble starts when LDL becomes oxidised, a process driven primarily by inflammation and chronic high blood sugar, and that’s when it can cause damage to blood vessel walls. LDL itself, in a healthy metabolic environment, is not the baddie it’s been cast as. In fact, the more you lower cholesterol through drug interventions, the more you compromise your mitochondria, the very engines your cells depend on for energy.

Not to sound like a cynic, but perhaps the focus on LDL levels is driven by our ability to medicate it. What we should really be measuring is triglycerides. They’re a far more accurate predictor of who may have a heart attack, often associated with a high caloric diet, obesity, and metabolic disorders, however there’s no drug that effectively lowers them. Diet does, but you can’t patent broccoli. Insulin resistance is another powerful early warning signal, again rarely tested in standard blood panels. It seems we measure what we can medicate.

Remember, cholesterol isn’t necessarily your enemy. An inflamed, high-sugar, trans fat-laden diet and sedentary, junk light, lifestyle is.

☀️ Sandy’s Sunshine

In a World Full of Prescriptions – Choose Nature as Medicine

I’ll be honest with you. People look at me kinda crazy sometimes. Just because I eat my breakfast on my lap, outside with my bare feet on the grass. And suggest my kids lie on the grass and stare at the clouds when they’re feeling drained and zapped by the day, doesn’t mean I’m some natural health hippie. I’m just tapping into the healer, that’s been doing it for thousands of years. Nature.

No side effects. No co-payment. No waiting room. No referral required.

For most of human history, when we felt low, anxious, depleted, or burnt out, we went outside (if we weren’t outside already). We put our feet on the earth, our faces to the sun, our hands in the soil. We sat by water. We walked until our thoughts untangled. Nobody prescribed it because nobody needed to. Then somewhere along the way, we built ourselves indoors. We swapped sunlight for fluorescent light, soil for sanitiser, cold water for comfort, and forest air for air conditioning. And then we wondered why we felt terrible.

So today, consider this your nature prescription for the week. No script or chemist run needed.

Feeling depressed? Go for a walk in the forest. Forest air contains phytoncides, natural compounds that quietly lower stress hormones and rebuild your immune system while you’re just… walking.

Anxious? Step outside and get direct sunlight in your eyes and on your skin. Early morning light sets your cortisol rhythm and stabilises your mood for the entire day. Free, instant and ancestrally approved.

Got a lot on your mind? Go for a long walk. Walking increases blood flow to your brain and allows your thoughts to untangle. Every single time.

Can’t sleep? Watch the sunrise tomorrow. Morning light sets the timer for melatonin production that night. Start the day right, sleep better at the end.

Feeling sad? Do some gardening. Soil contains bacteria that naturally boost serotonin. Gardening also measurably lowers cortisol. Dirt is medicine.

Experiencing stress? Swim in the cold ocean. Cold water activates your vagus nerve and pulls you out of fight-or-flight quickly. No ocean nearby? Hold ice cubes or an ice pack. Not as glamorous perhaps, but it works.

Feeling burnt out? Lie on the earth and do nothing. Direct contact with the ground reduces inflammation and calms your nervous system. Co-regulation with the earth’s own heartbeat.

Feeling overwhelmed? Sit by water and watch it flow. Natural water sounds calm the nervous system. Not just a feeling, actually backed by research.

Feeling irritable? Step outside and take some deep breaths. Fresh air, open space, and distance from screens are the fastest resets available to you.

Feeling depleted? Watch the sunset. Evening light, rich in red and infrared wavelengths, signals your mitochondria to shift into repair mode. Give in to it my friend, and let yourself rest.

Your nervous system, your mitochondria, your microbiome — they all recognise these inputs. They were built for them over millions of years.

Nature isn’t alternative medicine. It is the original medicine. 

“Cure yourself with the light of the sun and the rays of the moon.
With the sound of the river and the waterfall.
With the swaying of the sea and the fluttering of birds.
Heal yourself with mint, with neem and eucalyptus.
Sweeten yourself with lavender, rosemary, and chamomile.
Hug yourself with the cocoa bean and a touch of cinnamon.
Put love in tea instead of sugar, and take it looking at the stars.
Heal yourself with the kisses that the wind gives you and the hugs of the rain.
Get strong with bare feet on the ground and with everything that is born from it.
Get smarter every day by listening to your intuition, looking at the world with the eye of your forehead.
Jump, dance, sing, so that you live happier.
Heal yourself, with beautiful love, and always remember: you are the medicine.”

– María Sabina Magdalena García

 

Las Gemelas Falls (The Twins) in Bajos del Toro, Costa Rica.