Cheryl Howe - Health Coach

06/04/2026

You cannot “out-eat” ultra-processed foods with healthy ones.

Many people believe that as long as they are adding healthy foods into their diet, the harmful effects of ultra-processed foods are somehow canceled out.

Unfortunately, biology does not work that way.

Ultra-processed foods have been linked to inflammation, metabolic dysfunction, and increased risk for conditions that directly affect the brain, including cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease.

Adding healthy foods matters. But it is equally important to reduce the foods that are actively working against your health.

05/30/2026

NeoLife's Enzyme has Ox Bile and helps a lot of people digest fats, proteins, and carbs much better! Very helpful (IMO essential) if you don’t have a gallbladder.

Have you ever heard of ox bile?

Bile, a fluid your liver produces to help digest fats, is comprised of water, bile salts, cholesterol, and other substances.

The bile salts in bile are needed to break down fats and facilitate the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins. Lack of bile salts may lead to the formation of gallstones—hardened deposits in your gallbladder that can be painful.

Ox bile, a substance that comes from the gallbladders of cattle, contains bile salts that are nearly identical to those produced in your liver.

Ox bile can help prevent or rectify low bile salt levels in your bile and support gallbladder health.

05/29/2026

Very interesting info!

Unfiltered coffee raises your LDL cholesterol. Filtered coffee does not. The bean is identical. The only thing that changes is whether the brew passes through paper.

Coffee oil carries two diterpenes, cafestol and kahweol. They survive in French press, espresso, boiled, and Turkish coffee, and a paper filter traps almost all of them. That single step is the difference.

Once in your body, the diterpenes lead the liver to clear less cholesterol from your blood, and LDL climbs. Cafestol is one of the most potent cholesterol-raising compounds in the diet, and the effect shows up in controlled human trials, not just observational data. The diterpenes nudge triglycerides up too.

How much you get depends almost entirely on the brewing method. Per cup:

Unfiltered or boiled: about 4.4 mg
French press: about 2.8 mg
Espresso: about 1.2 mg
Paper-filtered drip: about 0.08 mg

That is roughly a 55-fold difference between an unfiltered cup and a paper-filtered one of the same coffee.

The long-term data points the same way. In 508,747 Norwegians followed for about 20 years, filtered coffee drinkers had lower mortality than people who drank no coffee at all. Unfiltered drinkers saw little or none of that benefit, and in men over 60, heavy unfiltered intake was associated with higher cardiovascular death. The risk tracked cholesterol: it grew when cholesterol was removed from the statistical model.
One honest caveat. That the LDL rise happens is well established. The exact molecular step, how the diterpenes lower cholesterol clearance, is still being worked out.

If your LDL is a concern, this is one of the easiest levers you have. You do not have to give up coffee. You just have to run it through paper.

Naidoo et al., Nutr J, 2011
Urgert et al., Eur J Clin Nutr, 1995
de Roos et al., J Intern Med, 2000
Tverdal et al., Eur J Prev Cardiol, 2020

05/29/2026

My health meetup topic this month was Insulin Resistance. Here's a good explanation from Dr. Berg on what is insulin resistance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxl8hhyN6AQ&t=1s

Want further solutions? Reach out to me!

Please Tell Me Your Success Story: https://bit.ly/2O9C0HTJust so you know, my full line of high-quality supplements is available on Amazon — search Dr. Berg ...

05/29/2026

Anyone local need one of these non-toxic sunscreens? I'm placing orders in a few days for both and can get for you too (no shipping and my price)! I'll put links in comments so you can look at them closer.

05/27/2026

Do you have any signs of Insulin Resistance? It is a main cause of many of the health issues we are dealing with today. I believe I have some key tools that can help support the body with insulin resistance, and would love to share them with you. If you can't come to my monthly health meetup tomorrow (link below), then please reach out and I'll follow up with you asap!

Event link: https://www.facebook.com/share/1EAfHVKwU4/

05/27/2026

Clean, non-toxic protection when it's needed! Link for info and to order in comments.

Our NEW Nutriance Daily Sun Prep provides top-notch protection without the greasy feel or white cast. This clean Broad Spectrum SPF 30 is enriched with sheer...

05/25/2026

Good info on Choline/Eggs! And remember...the better/cleaner they are fed, the better quality/nutition you are getting!

Choline is one of the few nutrients where the US population is genuinely under-consuming by intake. NHANES data show only 6.6% of US adults aged 19 and above meet the Adequate Intake (Wallace and Fulgoni, J Am Coll Nutr 2016). The shortfall is even larger in adolescents.

That matters because choline is not optional metabolism. It is the precursor for phosphatidylcholine (the major phospholipid in every cell membrane and the carrier that packages VLDL out of the liver), for the acetylcholine that runs cholinergic neurotransmission, and for betaine, a methyl donor that backstops the folate-dependent methylation system.

When you take choline out of human diets in controlled feeding studies, the consequences are not subtle. Fischer, da Costa et al. (Am J Clin Nutr 2007) fed 57 healthy adults a low-choline diet for up to 42 days. 77% of men and 80% of postmenopausal women developed fatty liver or muscle damage. Only 44% of premenopausal women did, because estrogen upregulates de novo phosphatidylcholine synthesis. Even at the current AI of 550 mg/day, six men in the study still developed organ dysfunction.

Niculescu et al. (Am J Clin Nutr 2007) showed that single-nucleotide polymorphisms in genes that interconvert choline, folate, and methyl pools modulate the requirement. People with variant alleles need more choline to avoid liver and muscle damage. The "AI" is a population average; individual requirement varies with genetics.

The food story is where the practical problem sits. Beef liver delivers 359 mg per 3-oz serving, but most people do not eat liver. Among foods people actually eat, one large egg at 147 mg is roughly twice the next-best common option (3 oz lean beef at 115 mg, salmon at 75 mg, chicken breast at 64 mg). Milk and most plant sources sit between 30 and 50 mg per serving. The math is not subtle: hitting 425 to 550 mg from non-egg foods alone requires deliberate planning around organ meats, fish, and legumes. Drop the eggs and the typical American diet falls well below the AI.

Two practical implications. First, the AI for choline is not aspirational. It is the dose calibrated against actual liver and muscle damage in controlled human feeding trials. Second, pregnant and lactating women have higher needs (450 and 550 mg/day) at a life stage where choline supports fetal brain development. The 2009-2012 NHANES data show pregnant women meeting the AI at rates similar to non-pregnant women, which is to say, rarely.
The "eggs are bad for cholesterol" advice removed the only convenient source of one of the few nutrients Americans actually run short on.
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Wallace and Fulgoni, J Am Coll Nutr 2016 · Fischer et al., Am J Clin Nutr 2007 · Niculescu et al., Am J Clin Nutr 2007 · Institute of Medicine DRI, 1998 · USDA Database for Choline Content of Common Foods