This week, a Harvard professor told me we’ve been getting sun exposure wrong for 50 years. A scientist proved crosswords don’t prevent dementia. And a pantry herb just beat blood pressure medication in a clinical trial. Welcome to The Rise.

In the last 12 months, the 7,000+ 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:

• What chronic hate and long-held grudges are physically doing to your brain
• The brain training that cut dementia risk by 25% over 20 years
• The pantry herb that dropped blood pressure by 8.5 points in 20 days
• Why 50 years of sun avoidance advice got it all wrong

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 #121 • 24 May, 2026

🌅 Rise Report

What Happens to Your Brain (And Your Heart) When You Hate

During my yoga days, we were taught that we are not our emotions — that our emotions are there to motivate us, not define us. It resonated with me and sounded great at the time. But today? I’m not so sure.

Brain imaging research from University College London, published in PLOS One, mapped exactly what happens in the brain when hate takes hold. It activates the putamen and insula, regions tied to aggression and disgust, whilst simultaneously switching off the right superior frontal gyrus: your empathy and impulse-control brakes. The more you hate, the more deeply those pathways are carved. It self-reinforces, like a groove worn deeper with each replay.

But it’s not just your brain that’s being affected. The physical cost is real too. A meta-analysis in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology found that chronic hostility raises coronary heart disease risk by 19% in healthy people, with stress hormones also suppressing immune function and impairing blood vessel function.

So if you find yourself getting hot under the collar because Jenny used your mug in the office, your boss didn’t acknowledge your work, or a good friend did you wrong — ask yourself if it’s really worth it. Because it isn’t.

The decentralised wisdom? Next time a grudge settles in, ask yourself: “What am I actually angry about here?” That’s often the question that breaks the loop. Compassion, starting with yourself, is the only thing research consistently shows can dismantle the neural pattern. Some things in life are genuinely hard to let go of, and I get that. But for the little things? It’s not worth the brain rewiring or increased risk to your heart health. Working on it isn’t for their sake. It’s for yours.

25% Lower Dementia Risk Two Decades Later – From Just a Few Hours of This

We’ve all been told about the power of doing crosswords and memory training when it comes to keeping our brain younger and healthier. We’ve assumed these puzzles were the gold standard for keeping dementia at bay however a landmark 20-year study just turned that assumption on its head.

A study called ACTIVE (Advanced Cognitive Training for Independent and Vital Elderly), published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Translational Research & Clinical Interventions in February 2026, followed 2,802 adults aged 65 and over for two decades. Three groups trained in different cognitive skills — memory, reasoning, and speed of processing. A control group did nothing.

Twenty years later, only one group showed a statistically meaningful reduction in dementia diagnoses – those who completed speed-of-processing training had a 25% lower incidence of dementia compared to the control group. The memory training and reasoning group showed no significant benefit. Speed, specifically, was the difference.

What made speed training work where the others didn’t comes down to two things. First, it was adaptive ie. it got harder as participants improved, constantly pushing the brain. Second, it drives implicit learning which is the kind of deep, unconscious skill-building that rewires the brain differently to memorising facts or strategies. Think learning to ride a bike versus memorising a bus timetable. One lives in your brain for decades. The other fades.

The takeaway?  Continue doing the things you love. Those crosswords, games and puzzles should never be underestimated. However if you have the chance to learn a new instrument, pick up pickleball, take a dance class, or learn a new language, give these a go. These activities all challenge the brain to become faster, more adaptive, and more automatic over time, exactly the kind of learning linked to lower dementia risk.

Espero que te haya gustado esta historia y que te ayude a mantener tu mente tan joven y brillante como tú. Nos vemos afuera, donde brilla el sol, amigo mío.

The Herb In Your Pantry & Cheap Natural Remedy for High Blood Pressure

High blood pressure is one of the most over-medicated conditions on the planet. It’s also one of the most preventable, yet for most people the default response still begins and ends with medication.

A randomised controlled trial just published in April 2026 by researchers at the University of Central Lancashire has quietly dropped something worth putting your cup of tea down for. They tested 100 microlitres of peppermint oil, which is about two small drops, taken twice daily for 20 days in adults with prehypertension or stage 1 hypertension.

Within this group, systolic blood pressure dropped by an average of 8.5 mmHg. That’s significant, with some prescribed antihypertensives not achieving much more. Researchers believe menthol and flavonoids were the active mechanisms which helped improve blood vessel relaxation. Lead researcher Dr Jonnie Sinclair called it “a very simple and cost-effective solution to potentially treat millions of people around the world.”

The decentralised wisdom? What I keep coming back to is this: nature still holds many answers we’ve overlooked. Real ones, with research behind them. So before we sign up for a lifetime prescription, it’s worth asking whether we’ve genuinely explored the long list of lifestyle changes and science-backed natural treatments we can do first.

P.S – For anyone interested, I have a 20 Natural Ways To Manage Your Blood Pressure inside the Actionables Library. You can find it here.

🤓 Smarty Pants

Deuterium: Not All Hydrogen Is Created Equal

Hydrogen is everywhere – including in us.
Not all hydrogen is equal.
And what happens to hydrogen, happens to us.

Hydrogen is everywhere. It’s in every glass of water you drink, every meal you eat, every plant that grows. It’s in the air. And in fact, it’s in you. Considering your body is around 60% water, and water is made of hydrogen and oxygen (remember H2o) this means, when you drill down to it, at the atomic level, most atoms in your body are hydrogen. So, it’s not just something you consume. It’s something you are.

And here’s what most of us have never been told – or at least I haven’t – all throughout my science classes, nursing training, clinical experience and natural health rabbit holes that I’ve fallen down over the past 20 years:

The 3 Types of Hydrogen

Without going too deep into chemistry (so stick with me), hydrogen actually comes in three natural forms, called isotopes. The first, protium, is the regular kind, making up 99.98% of all hydrogen. The third, tritium, is radioactive and extremely rare. But it’s the one in the middle that has scientists increasingly intrigued and the focus of our story today. Say hello to deuterium.

Deuterium

Deuterium is hydrogen’s heavier twin. It is the same element, but with one extra neutron in its nucleus, making it twice as heavy as regular hydrogen. That single extra neutron sounds insignificant. But inside your body, at the cellular level, that extra weight changes how deuterium behaves. And that difference matters more than most of us have ever been told.

Deuterium’s 60 Year Absence

Deuterium has been sitting in plain sight since American chemist Harold Urey isolated it in 1932 and won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for it two years later. For six decades it was filed away as a physics curiosity, nothing to do with human health. Until it wasn’t and was brought back into the fold by Gabor Somylai.

Deuterium has been getting increasing attention in certain health scenes of late so it’s time to unravel this story. Here’s an infographic to get you started and if you’re interested in more, I’ve just published the first in a four-part deep dive for Rise Circle members covering what deuterium actually is, where it comes from, what it’s doing inside your cells, and what the connection is between deuterium, your health and disease.

👉 Read the full series inside The Rise Circle

☀️ Sandy’s Sunshine 

The man who discovered your brain’s master clock thinks we’ve been getting sun exposure catastrophically wrong, and he has 400,000 people’s data to prove it.

Dr Martin Moore-Ede is a Harvard professor and physician who, back in the 1980s, led the team that discovered our suprachiasmatic nucleus – the master clock inside your brain that runs every circadian rhythm and cell in your body. He’s spent forty years studying what happens when humans live out of sync with natural light, and his book The Light Doctor was named a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2025.

This week, Dr Moore-Ede is our special guest and is tackling something that is going to make you rethink fifty years of public health advice. Over to you, Martin! ☀️

Public health experts have been correct about the relative risks of driving versus flying, but they have been very wrong about the risk of sunlight exposure. For the last 50 years public health educators have urged us to avoid too much sunlight, because of the increased risk of skin cancers, such as malignant melanoma.

Now, a new study from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland has quantified for the first time the relative risks of spending time outside versus staying indoors. The bottom line is the difference in relative risk is of the same order of magnitude as flying versus driving.

Patients undergoing heliotherapy for tuberculosis on sanatorium balconies, Leysin, Switzerland, c. 1910–1920. Photograph reproduced in multiple medical history archives; original photographer unknown.

Coming full circle

The benefits of sunlight for treating disease were not systematically studied until 1893. That was when a Danish medical scientist named Niels Ryberg Finsen, who suffered from chronic ill-health, started systematic studies of heliotherapy. His work, which earned him the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, showed that certain conditions such as lupus vulgaris, a skin manifestation of tuberculosis, responded well to sunlight.1

The widespread excitement following Dr Finsen’s work led to hundreds of clinics being opened in Europe and North America to treat patients with sunlight. Hospitals were built with balconies where patients could be wheeled out in their beds each day for bathing in the sun.

Heliotherapy mania reached a peak in 1928, the year that the first antibiotic, penicillin, was discovered by Alexander Fleming. The British newspaper of record, The Times, published a 48-page supplement on Heliotherapy extolling its virtues and widespread use. The enthusiasm wasn’t just limited to natural daylight exposure; ultraviolet lamps were widely promoted for their healing powers.

Fear of skin cancer should not keep you indoors

For the past 50 years we have been told that sunlight causes skin cancer, and we should avoid exposure to the sun. But the real risks of staying indoors have not been properly balanced against the risks of spending time outdoors.

We have previously discussed how people who spend more time outdoors live longer. For example, playing golf regularly can add 5 years to your lifespan (See Substack March 11, 2025). But the relative risks of outdoor versus indoor lifestyles were not precisely quantified.

Now a new study of over 400,000 people, using the UK Biobank data, shows that the increased risk of skin cancers from ultraviolet light exposure is very small compared to the reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and other causes of death when people spend time outdoors.

They divided 419,007 adults of white European ancestry into three groups 1) Low UV exposure, 2) Moderate UV exposure and 3) High UV exposure based on the time they spent outdoors, the latitude of where they lived, and their use of solariums, UV lamps, and sunscreen ointments. Deaths from skin cancer showed no clear dose-response relationship between the Low, Medium and High UV groups. However, the overall death rate, and the deaths from cardiovascular disease and other non-skin cancers, were substantially increased in the low UV group who spent the least time outside.3

To clarify the impact they projected what would happen if everyone in the study was in the high UV Exposure Group , and then if everyone was in the Low UV Exposure Group

• For every malignant skin cancer fatality saved by staying indoors, 75 deaths from other causes occur because of lack of exposure to the healing power of natural daylight.
• For every extra malignant skin cancer fatality caused by increased UV exposure, there would be 134 lives saved from all other causes of death, including heart attacks, and non-skin cancers (e.g. breast, prostate and colorectal cancer)

This study is still in the peer-review process and so it may be subject to final revisions, but it does suggest there is about a 1:100 ratio between deaths caused by UV exposure and deaths saved by UV exposure.

Everything we do in life has a risk. So, it is a question of picking the most favorable risk. And regular exposure to the full natural outdoor light spectrum, including the invisible ultraviolet and infrared, is clearly the risk that we should take.

To follow Dr Martin Moore-Ede and his wonderful work, you can subscribe to his Substack here. 

🔢 Number Crunch

12–14: The estimated millimoles per litre of deuterium,  hydrogen’s heavier twin, present inside the human body at any given time. That’s double the concentration of blood glucose, triple that of potassium, and six times that of calcium. And funny enough, it has never appeared on a single routine lab screen.

“A man is great not because he hasn’t failed; a man is great because failure hasn’t stopped him.” – Confucius