The Food Phoenix

The Food Phoenix My goal is to guide you on your journey of transformation into a healthier, revitalised, vibrant, authentic version of yourself.

I spend a lot of my time pointing out what the media gets wrong about medicine. So let me do the rarer thing and say wha...
19/06/2026

I spend a lot of my time pointing out what the media gets wrong about medicine. So let me do the rarer thing and say what one got right.

This week's Daily Mail feature on gadolinium, by Lynne Wallis, was genuinely good. Not "good for a tabloid." Good. She took patients who had been told for years that their symptoms were anxiety, and she treated them as people worth listening to. She spoke to more than one of us. She quoted a nephrologist researching the harm and a radiologist defending the contrast, and let the reader weigh it. That is what balance actually looks like, and it is harder to do than it sounds.

For those of us who have lived this, the experience of being believed in print, in a national newspaper, is difficult to describe. For twenty years, gadolinium retention in people with normal kidneys was treated as imagination. This week it was treated as news.

I have things I would add to the piece, and I have written those up. But that comes later. Today I just want to thank a journalist who did her homework and a paper that gave this a platform.

If you read it, let Lynne know it mattered. Good health journalism deserves to be told when it lands.

18/06/2026

Had our research meeting with Professor Wagner and his team to talk about the gadolinium paper we’re working on today.

Always such a pleasure chatting with great minds.

This week, I was featured in the Daily Mail's Health Supplement, in a piece about gadolinium, the contrast dye used in u...
17/06/2026

This week, I was featured in the Daily Mail's Health Supplement, in a piece about gadolinium, the contrast dye used in up to half of all MRI scans.

For years, those of us who felt our health collapse after an MRI were told it was stress, anxiety, or imagination. Normal labs, end of conversation. This week, a national newspaper printed it as news instead.

I told them what I have come to believe after my own MRI in 2016, and after meeting so many of you:

"Gadolinium doesn't just take your health, it takes your life as you knew it."

It's a great and very balanced piece that was extremely well researched and written. But, like everything in life, it's not perfect. It quotes a radiologist saying gadolinium has "helped and diagnosed millions." It is a reassuring number. It is also one that, when you go looking for the research, is nowhere to be found. What the studies actually measure is how often the contrast adds nothing. In one paediatric study, gadolinium revealed something not otherwise visible in 0.18% of patients. In prostate MRI, three-quarters did not need it at all, with no loss of accuracy.

If you have lived this, you are not imagining it, and you are not alone. I have written the whole thing up, sources and all, on the blog. Link in the comments. 🔗

If you want a place to start making sense of your own story, my free MRI Contrast Guide is there too.

In the Daily Mail today. I also suspect the Astro turfers, troll farms, and bots have been activated in the comments. ...
16/06/2026

In the Daily Mail today.

I also suspect the Astro turfers, troll farms, and bots have been activated in the comments.

15/06/2026

The UK prime minister has announced that he’s going to ban under 16s from using social media.

Great. Social media can be terrible for the mental health of kids. It’s rife with online bullying.

Except, parents can already restrict their access to it using their phones and personal devices. How much effort has the government made to ensure parents know how to flip the switches on their kids’ devices?

Hmmmm.

And how are you going to prove that you’re over 18?

When you think about it, perhaps this is more about ensuring that the government is surveilling all of us by making us attach our social media to our identities.

But also, without social media, how easy will it be to access alternative points of views that aren’t government sanctioned? How long will it remain easy to do so?

This reeks of a move to control narratives and identify people who might turn out to have antigovernment agendas.

It reeks of control and government overreach.

Bees have a thing about rhododendrons. I happen to love bees. So, I’m happy.
12/06/2026

Bees have a thing about rhododendrons.

I happen to love bees. So, I’m happy.

Baby mice injected daily with gadolinium, then tested for grip strength.The result: these mice were strong. Impossibly s...
10/06/2026

Baby mice injected daily with gadolinium, then tested for grip strength.

The result: these mice were strong. Impossibly strong. The numbers are roughly double the published range for healthy mice their age, in animals the same study describes as half-grown and underweight.

Sick, scrawny, underfed pups with the grip of a small monkey. I kept waiting for the radioactive spider. There is not one. There is just a number that needed to come out high, and somebody holding the mouse in a way that made it happen.

(When a different person measured a fresh batch in the follow-up study, the superpowers vanished. Schrodinger's mice: strong until someone else looks.)

Now the part that stops being funny.

In the pregnant-mother study, at least one in four, possibly one in three, produced no surviving offspring in the worst group. Found dead, unable to carry, or losing the whole litter. The researchers started adding spare mothers partway through to cover the losses they were now expecting. For one drug, even the spares were not enough.

The dose that did this was declared "no observable adverse effect."

This is the metal in your MRI contrast dye. These are the studies your doctor trusts when they say it is safe.

I have written the whole thing up, comic-book style, every fact sourced to the manufacturers' own papers. Link in the first comment.

P.S. All links are in the first comment below.

Oh no!Poor little coot should have made that nest substantially higher. More rain forecast. Now, I guess I know why I’ve...
04/06/2026

Oh no!
Poor little coot should have made that nest substantially higher. More rain forecast.

Now, I guess I know why I’ve never seen them nest in that pond before.

I reviewed three FDA-mandated drug safety studies this month as if they were comic books. It turned out to be the only h...
04/06/2026

I reviewed three FDA-mandated drug safety studies this month as if they were comic books. It turned out to be the only honest way to read them.

Here is the plot of the first one. Baby mice are injected daily with a toxic heavy metal to find out if it is safe. (It is already inside about a hundred million people, but never mind, the safety homework is being handed in a couple of decades late.) The mice are then tested for grip strength.

And the results say these mice were strong. Strangely, impossibly strong. The published grip numbers run to roughly double the normal published range for healthy mice their age, in animals that were, three pages earlier, described as half-sized and underweight.

Sick, scrawny, underfed baby mice with the grip of a small monkey. I kept waiting for the radioactive spider. There isn't one. There is just a number that needed to come out high, and somebody holding the mouse in a way that made it happen. (Tell-tale sign: when a different team measured a fresh batch in the follow-up study, the superpowers vanished. Schrödinger's mice, strong until someone else looks.)

Now the part that stops being funny.

These super mice are the survivors. In the study on pregnant mothers, the paper quietly notes that each group had "more than 15 pregnancies", from starting groups of 22 to 26 mothers. Do the arithmetic: that means more than a quarter of the mothers in the worst group, possibly a third, produced nothing at all. Found dead, unable to carry, or losing the whole litter. One drug's losses were so bad that partway through, they started adding spare mothers to cover them, and for that drug, the spares still were not enough. The lab's own normal failure rate is about one in fourteen.

And then they called the dose that did it "no observable adverse effect."

This is the metal in MRI contrast dyes. I have a lot more to say about it. 🧵👇

It’s that time of year again… elderflower and rose cordial time! Rose petals are so beautiful. There are Madame Isaac Pe...
02/06/2026

It’s that time of year again… elderflower and rose cordial time!

Rose petals are so beautiful.

There are Madame Isaac Pereire and Madame Calvat roses in there. They smell of damask/powder and a hint of fruity raspberry.

Also a few white Madame Alfred Carrier, which smell of lychees.

And some Comte de Chambord old roses, which are perpetual damasks with a pure damask scent. It’s basically Turkish delight.

I grow my own roses and they aren’t sprayed ever. Which is more than can be said for most roses used for edible purposes.

My roses black spot like mad, but that’s the price you pay. And the old bourbon roses are particularly black spot prone. But that’s only affects the leaves, not the flowers.

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