Science & Society - Red, Blue & Real

2025-09-262025-09-26

Zeolite Safety and Medical Applications

Diagram showing clinoptilolite properties in vivo, including protective effects on brain, immune activation, liver support, intestinal improvement, bone regeneration, and roles in detoxification, antioxidant activity, trace elements, and microbiota support.

## Summary
This critical review from PubMed examines the safety and medical applications of clinoptilolite, a natural zeolite with unique porous and ion-exchange properties. The authors highlight its ability to bind toxins such as ammonia, heavy metals, and mycotoxins while sparing essential nutrients, making it a promising candidate for detoxification. Evidence from animal and early human studies suggests that clinoptilolite supplementation can:
Improve gut barrier integrity (e.g., lower zonulin levels, reduced intestinal permeability)
Support microbiota balance by reducing harmful compounds without disturbing nutrient uptake
Exert antioxidant and immunomodulatory effects, boosting enzymes like superoxide dismutase and catalase
Provide safety reassurance, with no adverse impacts on blood mineral levels reported in veterinary trials
The review concludes that clinoptilolite is structurally stable, generally safe for in vivo use, and may serve as a valuable adjuvant for maintaining body homeostasis. However, the authors stress that human clinical data remain limited and call for standardized materials and rigorous long-term studies.

## Abstract
Unique and outstanding physical and chemical properties of zeolite materials make them extremely useful in a variety of applications including agronomy, ecology, manufacturing, and industrial processes. Recently, a more specific application of one naturally occurring zeolite material, clinoptilolite, has been widely studied in veterinary and human medicine. Due to a number of positive effects on health, including detoxification properties, the usage of clinoptilolite-based products in vivo has increased enormously. However, concerns have been raised in the public about the safety of clinoptilolite materials for in vivo applications. Here, we review the scientific literature on the health effects and safety in medical applications of different clinoptilolite-based materials and propose some comprehensive, scientifically-based hypotheses on possible biological mechanisms underlying the observed effects on the health and body homeostasis. We focus on the safety of the clinoptilolite material and the positive medical effects related to detoxification, immune response, and the general health status.

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## study:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6277462/

2025-09-262025-09-26

The Science of Living to 117

# The Science of Living to 117

When María Branyas Morera, the world’s oldest living person, died in August 2024, she was 117 years and 168 days old. Born in San Francisco in 1907 and raised in Spain, she lived through two world wars, multiple pandemics, and more than a century of profound social change. Her remarkable longevity drew the attention of scientists, who set out to understand how her body endured for so long without succumbing to the illnesses that usually come with age.

María spent most of her life in Catalonia, where she followed a Mediterranean diet and ate yogurt daily. She enjoyed gardening, walking, reading, playing piano, and spending time with family, friends, and the dogs at her residence. She kept regular sleep habits and remained socially engaged well into her later years. These patterns of diet, activity, and community may have supported the biological resilience revealed in her samples.

A team of researchers in Spain and elsewhere carried out one of the most detailed biological investigations ever conducted on a single individual, and the most comprehensive study of any supercentenarian. They examined María’s genome, immune system, metabolism, proteins, microbiome, and epigenetic profile. The results give a layered view of extreme aging, showing both the wear of time and the unusual strengths that appeared to protect her health.

## A Genetic Foundation

The study revealed no single “longevity gene.” Instead, María carried a collection of rare genetic variants scattered across pathways tied to immunity, heart health, cognition, and mitochondrial energy production. These subtle advantages likely worked in combination. Her telomeres—the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes—were strikingly short, among the lowest seen in healthy people. Short telomeres usually predict illness, but in her case they may have acted as a biological clock without triggering disease. Some researchers suggest that telomere erosion might even limit cancer risk by curbing the ability of malignant cells to divide.

## The Immune System at Work

Blood analysis showed familiar signs of age. She had clonal hematopoiesis, a condition in which blood cells acquire mutations that can predispose to cancer or cardiovascular disease. Her B cells also carried features linked with aging. Yet these potential risks never developed into illness. At the same time, her immune system displayed youthful characteristics, including preserved autophagy and strong populations of cytotoxic T cells. These defenses may have helped her resist infection and malignancy even in her last years.

## A Metabolism That Defied Age

One of the most striking findings came from her metabolic profile. María processed fats with remarkable efficiency. Her triglycerides and very-low-density lipoproteins were extremely low, while her high-density lipoproteins—the so-called “good cholesterol”—were exceptionally high. She also showed very low levels of inflammation, a feature strongly associated with protection against heart disease, diabetes, and dementia. Taken together, these traits offered a picture of a body that continued to run smoothly long after most people’s systems falter.

## The Microbial Signature of Youth

The microbes living in her gut told a similar story. Diversity was high, and Bifidobacterium, a beneficial bacterial group that usually declines with age, was unusually abundant. She ate yogurt daily, which may have supported this microbiome balance. Harmful bacterial groups tied to inflammation and frailty were less common. This bacterial profile linked neatly with her anti-inflammatory metabolism and with the Mediterranean diet she followed for much of her life.

## Epigenetic Youthfulness

Another layer of protection came from her epigenome—the chemical modifications that regulate gene activity. Across several independent measures, her “biological age” read decades younger than her actual years. She also maintained methylation at repetitive DNA sequences, a stabilizing feature often lost in older individuals. These molecular signs suggest that her cells aged at a slower pace than her body’s calendar indicated.

## A Dual Portrait of Aging

The study paints a complex picture. On one side were unmistakable marks of time: short telomeres, mutated blood cells, and age-associated immune changes. On the other side were protective systems that kept her organs functioning and her mind intact. Disease and decline, so often seen as inseparable from aging, did not follow in lockstep.

## What It Means for the Rest of Us

The case of María cannot be taken as a blueprint for everyone. She was a singular individual, shaped by both genetics and lifelong habits. Yet her biology highlights possible paths toward healthier aging. Efficient lipid metabolism, low chronic inflammation, a supportive microbiome, and stable epigenetic regulation emerge as recurring themes. Each represents a potential lever for extending healthspan, whether through diet, lifestyle, or future therapies.

Studying one extraordinary life does not answer every question. It does, however, challenge assumptions about the limits of the human body. María’s story suggests that aging and disease are not bound together as tightly as once thought. Under the right circumstances, the body can carry its years with surprising resilience.

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https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-medicine/fulltext/S2666-3791(25)00441-0

2025-08-092025-09-30

The More-Is-Better Trap: When Remedy Stacking Backfires

# More treatments can mean more problems, not more healing

Even harmless remedies can cause harm when combined, because interactions, not the individual substances, often create problems of their own. Whether the label says “natural” or “prescription,” stacking multiple interventions can create a tangle of interactions that no one can fully analyze. In natural health, that might mean combining herbs, supplements, and specialty foods. In conventional medicine, it means layering prescriptions where side effects lead to new diagnoses, new drugs, and still more side effects. In both cases, the result can be a spiral of problems that no one can untangle.

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## The Allure of More

When you are living with pain or illness, every success story feels like a lifeline. If a single supplement or herb seems to help, it is tempting to think that adding more will speed recovery. Online forums amplify that mindset. “If one helps, five will help more” can start to feel like common sense. Someone might start with high-dose vitamin D, then add ashwagandha, then medicinal mushrooms, then turmeric, all in the same week. This can happen whether the remedies are aimed at joint pain, autoimmune control, digestive health, or anything else.

The same logic plays out in conventional medicine. A prescription relieves one symptom, but another drug is added to manage the side effects. Then another is prescribed to treat the new condition that emerges. For example, a blood pressure medication might cause swelling, which is treated with a diuretic, which then causes electrolyte imbalances that require yet another prescription. Before long, the effects become impossible to track, and even the prescriber cannot say with certainty what is helping and what is making things worse.

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## Is Safe + Safe Always Safe?

It is easy to assume that if one remedy is safe, and another is safe, then taking both together should also be safe. Sometimes this is true. But sometimes the combination changes how each one works in the body.

Two safe remedies can interact in ways that make the effects much stronger than expected, cancel each other out, or create brand-new effects that neither would cause alone. For example, ashwagandha and valerian might each gently lower blood pressure, but together they could drop it enough to cause dizziness. Similarly, doctors watch for drug interactions because combining medications can turn a safe dose into a dangerous one or make an effective treatment stop working.

Once you are combining multiple treatments, the possible effects multiply. At some point, determining cause and effect becomes impossible for even the most thorough researcher.

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## A Smarter Path Forward

The only reliable way to understand whether something is helping or harming is to introduce it on its own and give it enough time to see how the body responds before adding anything else. This slower pace avoids the fog of overlapping effects that make sorting out benefits from problems impossible.

Working with a knowledgeable professional can add safety and clarity, but science does not know everything about how the body works, and no one is a statistic. Two people can respond very differently to the same combination. Even with expert guidance, it often comes down to paying close attention to your own body and your own responses.

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## Conclusion

In health care, natural or conventional, more is not always better. Sometimes the combination itself creates the problem. A deliberate, one-step-at-a-time approach offers the best way out of the more-is-better trap—giving you the clearest path to what actually works.

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**Read More: Research**

**Polypharmacy Research:**
Research involving 1,742,336 older adults found that 44% had polypharmacy (using 5+ medications simultaneously), and up to 11% of unplanned hospital admissions were related to harm from polypharmacy, with about 50% of these being preventable ([BioMed Central](https://bmcgeriatr.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12877-021-02183-0)).

A study investigating drug interactions in an emergency department found that interactions were present in 16% of subjects, with rates ranging from 5.6% for those taking two drugs to 100% for those taking seven drugs ([PubMed Central](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10299180/)).

**Natural Supplement Interactions:**
Nearly 25% of U.S. adults report concurrently taking a prescription medication with a dietary supplement ([PubMed](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28762712/)), yet only one-third of supplement users inform their physician ([American Academy of Family Physicians](https://www.aafp.org/pubs/afp/issues/2017/0715/p101.html)) about their use.

A UK study found that about one in three people using supplements concurrently with prescription drugs was at risk of a potential herb-drug interaction ([British Journal of General Practice](https://bjgp.org/content/68/675/e711)). Some supplements, such as St. John’s wort and goldenseal, are known to cause clinically important drug interactions and should be avoided by most patients receiving any pharmacologic therapy ([American Academy of Family Physicians](https://www.aafp.org/pubs/afp/issues/2017/0715/p101.html)).

**The Research Gap:**
Well-designed clinical studies evaluating herbal supplement-drug interactions are limited and sometimes inconclusive, and most herb-drug interactions identified in current sources are hypothetical, inferred from animal studies or cellular assays ([NCCIH](https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/providers/digest/herb-drug-interactions)).

### Citations:
– [Polypharmacy and severe potential drug-drug interactions among older adults with cardiovascular disease in the United States | BMC Geriatrics | Full Text](https://bmcgeriatr.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12877-021-02183-0)
– [Risk of Polypharmacy and Its Outcome in Terms of Drug Interaction in an Elderly Population: A Retrospective Cross-Sectional Study – PMC](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10299180/)
– [Common Herbal Dietary Supplement-Drug Interactions – PubMed](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28762712/)
– [Common Herbal Dietary Supplement–Drug Interactions | AAFP](https://www.aafp.org/pubs/afp/issues/2017/0715/p101.html)
– [Prevalence of drug–herb and drug–supplement interactions in older adults: a cross-sectional survey | British Journal of General Practice](https://bjgp.org/content/68/675/e711)
– [Herb-Drug Interactions | NCCIH](https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/providers/digest/herb-drug-interactions)

### More sources:
– [Medication Safety in Polypharmacy](https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/patient-safety/who-uhc-sds-2019-11-eng.pdf)
– [Frontiers | Polypharmacy, drug–drug interactions and adverse drug reactions in older Chinese cancer patients: evidence from CHARLS](https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/pharmacology/articles/10.3389/fphar.2025.1579023/full)
– [Polypharmacy – StatPearls – NCBI Bookshelf](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK532953/)
– [Polypharmacy and potential drug-drug interactions in home-dw | JMDH](https://www.dovepress.com/polypharmacy-and-potential-drugndashdrug-interactions-in-home-dwelling-peer-reviewed-fulltext-article-JMDH)
– [A study of harmful drug–drug interactions due to polypharmacy in hospitalized patients in Goa Medical College – PMC](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5654218/)
– [Targeting continuity of care and polypharmacy to reduce drug–drug interaction | Scientific Reports](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-78236-y)
– [The rising tide of polypharmacy and drug-drug interactions: population database analysis 1995–2010 | BMC Medicine | Full Text](https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-015-0322-7)
– [Association of polypharmacy and potential drug‐drug …](https://acsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cncr.34642)
– [Insights from herb interactions studies: a foundational report for integrative medicine | Future Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences | Full Text](https://fjps.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s43094-025-00794-7)
– [Herbal and Dietary Supplement–Drug Interactions in Patients with Chronic Illnesses | AAFP](https://www.aafp.org/pubs/afp/issues/2008/0101/p73.html)
– [Herbal interactions: resources to support answering questions](https://www.sps.nhs.uk/articles/herbal-interactions-resources-to-support-answering-questions/)
– [Everyday Evaluation of Herb/Dietary Supplement–Drug Interaction: A Pilot Study](https://www.mdpi.com/2305-6320/10/3/20)
– [Understanding the relevance of herb–drug interaction… : Porto Biomedical Journal](https://journals.lww.com/pbj/fulltext/2019/04000/understanding_the_relevance_of_herb_drug.1.aspx)
– [Drug Interaction Checker – Find Unsafe Combinations](https://www.drugs.com/drug_interactions.html)