Iris on health and longevity · June 24th

Your “relaxing” is keeping you stressed. Scrolling isn’t rest. Netflix-while-texting isn’t rest. Your nervous system reads constant input as “stay alert.” The cortisol stays up. And nothing feels calming — no matter how tired you are. Most stress advice treats your evening as the problem to fix. Wind down more. Breathe more. Try harder to relax. But here’s what nobody tells you. Cortisol is your main stress hormone. It’s meant to rise in the morning and fall by night. When you’re “on” all day — texts, news, decisions — it can stay elevated into the evening.

Temuri Ugulava, the charismatic force behind Tbilisi’s Stamba Hotel and a champion of Georgia’s natural‑wine revival, passed away at 56 while being treated for lung cancer. He grew up amid the post‑Soviet upheaval, then turned his boundless energy toward reshaping modern Georgia—first in politics, later in hospitality, always with a genuine love for his country.

Seeing natural wine as a cultural touchstone, he brought the chaotic, unpretentious vibe of Copenhagen’s wine scene to Georgia, converting Stamba, its sister hotels and clubs to serve only natural wines. He even recruited the former Noma wine director to run the program, creating a lively bar and shop that quickly became a local hotspot.

The result was a space where locals and visitors mingle over Georgian and European natural wines, moving thousands of bottles a night and keeping the country’s 8,000‑year‑old wine tradition vibrant. His passion left an enduring imprint on the city’s hospitality scene and on the people who shared his love of wine.

There’s a gas your body makes that keeps your arteries open. It lowers your blood pressure. It drives oxygen to your brain, your heart, every organ you have. By your 40s, you’re making roughly half of what you did at 30. By your 70s, far less. It’s called nitric oxide. And almost nobody — including most doctors — is watching it. By the end of this post you’ll know the five everyday habits that rebuild it — and the exact daily order that makes them work as a system instead of a scattered list. “You didn’t lose your energy because you got old. You lost the signal your arteries ran on for 40 years — and you can send it again.” If you’ve felt the afternoon crash that sleep doesn’t fix, the cold hands and feet, the blood pressure creeping up for no reason anyone can name — this is the thread that ties them together. Not six problems. Often one quiet shortage. Here’s how you rebuild it. Start here, because it’s free and costs nothing but stepping outside. Sunlight on bare skin releases nitric oxide that’s already stored there — and sends it into your bloodstream. → 10–20 minutes of daylight on your skin in the morning → A short daily dose — not a sunburn. More isn’t better. your skin holds a reservoir of nitric oxide compounds. UV light converts them to the active molecule, which relaxes blood vessels and lowers pressure — and research suggests this works separately from vitamin D. Research suggests UV light on skin may lower blood pressure by mobilising these stores. Verify the study → pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24445737 Your sinuses produce nitric oxide continuously. Every breath through your nose carries it into your lungs and bloodstream. Every breath through your mouth skips it entirely. → Mouth closed — walking, working, and sleeping if you can → Bonus: humming briefly raises nasal nitric oxide many times over nitric oxide made in your sinuses mixes with the air you inhale, improving how efficiently your lungs deliver oxygen. Research suggests nasal nitric oxide rises sharply during humming compared with quiet breathing. Verify the study → pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12119224 This is the food route to nitric oxide — and it works even when the age-related route is fading. → Beets, arugula, raw spinach, beetroot leaves → A small glass of beet juice counts → Add berries or pomegranate — antioxidants help it last your mouth bacteria turn dietary nitrate into nitrite, which your body converts to nitric oxide. This pathway doesn’t depend on the enzyme that declines with age. Research suggests daily dietary nitrate may provide sustained blood pressure lowering in people with hypertension. Verify the study → pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25421976 This is the one almost nobody expects — and it has the most direct research behind it. Mouthwash kills bacteria. That’s the point. But it also kills the specific mouth bacteria that perform the first step of turning your greens into nitric oxide. → Swap it for a salt-water rinse — or just brush and floss wipe out those bacteria and you break the chain. In one study, a week of antibacterial mouthwash raised systolic blood pressure — some people by 5 mmHg or more. Research suggests antibacterial mouthwash may raise blood pressure by disrupting nitrate-reducing oral bacteria. Verify the study → pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23183324 When blood rushes through your vessels during effort, the friction itself signals your vessel walls to make more nitric oxide. → Short bursts of effort, or resistance training → Not for the calories — for the signal this “shear stress” is one of the strongest natural triggers for nitric oxide production in the vessel lining. Flexible, dilated arteries are the result. A note on supplements: if you want to add one, the evidence is strongest for L-citrulline — an add-on, not a replacement. Run it past your doctor first. These five aren’t five separate fixes. They feed one molecule through different doors. Sunlight and nose breathing tap stored reserves. Greens open the food route. Skipping mouthwash protects the bacteria that route runs on. Exercise drives the route that’s left. You’re not pushing one lever harder. You’re loading every entrance at once — and plugging the leaks. That’s why they compound. These habits don’t just work alone. Each one sets up the next. The sequence is the system.

There is a feeling that is almost impossible to describe to someone who has never had it. You are sitting in an ordinary moment, a conversation, a meeting, a family dinner, and you become aware of existing on two completely different frequencies at once. Part of you is ancient. Part of you is unfinished. Neither part feels entirely at home in the age printed on your driver’s license. You have felt 70 in a room full of people your age. You have felt 17 in rooms where everyone expected gravity. Sometimes both happen on the same afternoon, occasionally within the same conversation. This is one of the most disorienting and least discussed features of neurocomplex life. The gifted adult, the ADHDer, the autistic person, the AuDHDer navigating both simultaneously — none of them age the way developmental psychology textbooks describe. The milestones do not arrive in sequence. The wisdom does not wait for the wrinkles. The playfulness does not dissolve with responsibility. You accumulate decades of insight in certain domains while remaining genuinely, almost stubbornly unfinished in others. The result is a self that feels chronologically scrambled, perpetually out of sync with whatever timeline the people around you seem to be following. This essay is about that scrambling. Where it comes from, why it is so isolating, and why it might actually be telling you something true about the nature of your mind. Signs This Is You Read more

Remember when you were obsessed with horses as a kid? That ‘phase’ isn’t just a nostalgic

The Summer Day, by Mary Oliver Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean— the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down— who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away. I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? Tuesday: The sound of rain on the roof. I remembered to say no black pepper on my breakfast sandwich. Rummikub. Now you? Tell me 3 good things? Xo.

What came out of that journey was a deep passion for health, healing, and helping others find their way through complex chronic illness. And a 16-step framework that has helped thousands of people on that path. Scott is a trusted collaborator and a friend in this space, and we're excited to have him back. This conversation has something meaningful for everyone. We talk about: ✅ Scott's personal healing journey ✅ The foundational steps in healing, and where to start ✅ Why mast cell stabilization belongs early in the process ✅ The difference between detox and drainage, and why both matter ✅ And more 00:00:00 – Introduction – Chronic Illness, MCAS, & Healing: A Conversation With Scott Forsgren 00:03:26 – Introducing Scott Forsgren, Founder of BetterHealthGuy.com 00:12:50 – Do You Believe Healing Is Possible for Those With Complex Chronic Illness? 00:15:40 – Scott Forsgren's 16 Steps to Healing :Learn More at BetterHealthGuy.com/steps 00:24:00 – Why Do Both Scott & MC360 Recommend Nervous System Work as a First Step? 00:29:18 – What Does It Look Like When It's Time for Someone to Move Forward Onto Next Steps? 00:32:24 – What Are the Five Stages of the Mast Cell 360 Method? : Learn More at mastcell360.com/method 00:33:25 – How Is Mast Cell Stabilization Included in Scott's 16 Steps to Healing? 00:39:44 – What Do We See When People Try to Go Faster Than Their Body Can Handle? 00:44:35 – The Drainage & Detox Step: What Needs to Come First & How Does This Make a Difference? 00:55:34 – Why Is Your External Environment Such an Important Part of Healing? 01:01:36 – Can You Heal in a Home That Still Has Mold? 01:03:25 – If You Don't React to Any Foods, Could You Still Have Histamine Intolerance? 01:04:52 – What Can We Do to Manage Our Stress? 01:11:55 – Do Detox & Drainage Protocols Have a Common Starting Point? 01:16:10 – Can You Heal in an Imperfect Home? 01:20:50 – What If You Are Completely Overwhelmed & Unsure Where to Start?

(MedPage Today) -- The emergence of immunotherapy for esophageal cancer provided a glimmer of hope to patients and clinicians affected by the historically poor-prognosis disease. The glimmer has not only persisted but perhaps grown brighter as...

The Food and Drug Administration quietly told wearable maker Whoop last week that it would not take further enforcement action over a controversial feature that gives users a reading of their blood pressure. In July 2025, the agency warned Whoop for releasing its Blood Pressure Insights feature without clearance, saying it was a medical device that required review. “The product is intended to provide a measurement or estimation of a user’s blood pressure, which is inherently associated with the diagnosis of hypo- and hypertension,” the agency wrote. Whoop argued at the time that the feature could be released without review because it was intended for wellness purposes and not to diagnose or treat a disease. “We won’t let regulatory overreach dictate how people access their own health data,” CEO Will Ahmed wrote at the time.

If you love ice cream like I do, it’s worth investing in an ice cream maker. Homemade just can’t be beat. This lemon ice cream is one of my favorite things to keep in the freezer during summer. It’s creamy, sweet, and has that fresh lemon flavor that makes it taste so much better than store-bought. I love serving it on top of warm cakes, cobblers, pies, or just eating a scoop on its own! Tini’s Tips Only zest the yellow part of the lemon, the white part underneath is bitter. As soon as the mixture starts simmering, remove it from the heat so the eggs don’t scramble! No Ninja Creami? This works great in a regular ice cream maker too. What You’ll Need 1 tablespoon lemon zest ½ cup fresh lemon juice 2 whole eggs 1 egg yolk 1 cup sugar 1 cup whole milk 2 teaspoons vanilla extract (or more, I measure with my heart!) 1 ¼ cups heavy cream Step 1: Prep the Lemon Zest your lemon until you have about 1 tablespoon of zest. Make sure you’re only zesting the yellow part, not the white. Then juice enough lemons to get ½ cup fresh lemon juice. Step 2: Make the Base In a saucepan, add the sugar, eggs, egg yolk, lemon juice, whole milk, and vanilla. Whisk everything together until smooth. Place over medium heat and continue whisking until the mixture comes to a gentle simmer. As soon as it starts simmering, remove it from the heat. Step 3: Strain & Chill Pour the mixture through a fine mesh strainer into a bowl to catch any bits of cooked egg. Place in the fridge and let it cool until it’s cool to the touch. Step 4: Add Cream Once chilled, add the heavy cream and whisk until fully combined. Step 5: Freeze Pour the mixture into your Ninja Creami pint containers. Secure the lids and freeze overnight until completely solid. Step 6: Spin & Serve Once frozen, add the pint to your Ninja Creami and run the Ice Cream setting until finished! Enjoy on top of summer desserts… or straight from the pint! Xo,