New Learning Opportunities for 2026

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The new year brings new opportunities for me to teach and for you to learn. As I said in Tuesday’s Memo, the first webinar of the year will be Weight Loss Supplements. But there’s more—here’s what’s happening.

New Member Benefits

Since the radio station changed the format of my radio show to short podcasts, the Straight Talk on Health podcast is free to anyone who wants to find it on Spotify or the like. As a benefit for Members and Insiders, I’m going to replace it with a combination of expanded segments of past Memos and the podcasts themselves. There’s always more to say, and now I get to give you an unrestricted, bottom-line approach to health research and news. Check out the benefits of membership at drchet.com. The prices remain the same, but the benefits will continue to grow.

Super Bowl Webinar

Continuing with the theme of Aging with a Vengeance, this webinar on February 8 will be an in-depth look at the three supplements necessary to gaining muscle at any age. What does each do in the body for muscle and other functions? How much do you really need? Most important, what are the potential hazards of each or when used together? Taking Back Your Muscle, Part 2 looks at the most recent research to update and go more in depth on the building blocks of muscle. Whether the Buffalo Bills reach the game (my eternal hope) or not, you’ll learn more about nutrition for muscle strength for any age.

The Bottom Line

This is where we begin 2026. When the new webinars are ready for sale, I’ll send a special Memo announcing it. There is so much more to come; 2026 is a journey and you’re invited along for the ride.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Weight Loss Myth Busted

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There’s been so much written about weight loss, no wonder it’s so hard to know what really works. But there’s one weight loss myth that has been busted. You may have heard experts and gurus say, “It’s not about the calories!” They have blamed junk food and renamed it ultra-processed food; they condemned sugar intake, seed oils, and a whole host of other things, but it’s not about the specific foods.

One fact that the increased use of GLP-1 receptor agonists has clearly demonstrated is that when people use the medication, they eat less. The biochemistry allows the body to do what the body is supposed to do when we’ve eaten enough calories: it makes us feel full, slows the stomach from emptying food, and decreases our appetite. That’s supposed to happen naturally, but we’ve allowed our body to ignore it and thus, we’ve eaten way more calories than we’ve needed; that’s why 70% of us are overweight. But at the end of the day, taking the medication forces us to eat fewer calories or suffer the consequences (which are rumored to be quite unpleasant).

Weight loss always was, still is, and always will be about the calories.

That myth is busted.

While we know that GLP-1 agonists work, are there any ways to help lose weight without medications? You’ll learn all about them when I update the Weight Loss Supplements webinar; it’s been 14 years since I originally did that webinar, and a lot has changed in the supplement world. Some are gone; remember hoodia? Some have stuck around, but new ones are on the scene. What has enough science to be a contender? Find out on January 24—more information to come.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Anticipate Roadblocks

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As the new year approaches, I’m sure that you’re thinking about and planning for what you want to accomplish in 2026. We set goals for many aspects of our lives; although they could apply to any goal you set, I’ll keep my comments related to health goals.

Plenty of books, videos, and on-line groups discuss how to set goals, how to execute your plan, and how to construct your day to achieve those goals. The one they often miss, especially related to health, is what do you do when something goes wrong. You can make up the best schedule to accomplish your goals, but what do you do when something you planned gets changed and is beyond your ability to control?

Anticipate that there will be problems and have a back-up plan in place, both for a short-term, one-day thing or something that may last longer. Here are a couple of examples.

  • Have a back-up breakfast, lunch, or dinner if your schedule is interrupted. It could be something simple like always having a meal bar with you, finding a healthy fast-food choice, choosing the healthiest meal at a diner, or keeping a healthy meal in the freezer.
  • You forgot your workout gear on a day when you only have a specific time to work out. Don’t waste that time; there are exercises you can perform at work during a break. If you need ideas, check out the Bit Fills exercises and stretches in the Health Info section of drchet.com.
  • How about slipping on the ice and dislocating your shoulder? That takes time to heal. Look for a piece of cardio equipment you can sit on, such as a recumbent bike at a fitness facility that doesn’t require a long-term commitment.

There are hundreds of things that interfere with your health goals. As you plan, think about what you will do if something comes up that interferes with your plan.

Be safe New Years Eve.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Merry Christmas!

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Whatever holiday you celebrate at this time of year, Happy Holidays from Paula, Jamie, Riley, and myself. This is the time of year when we focus on sharing goodwill with others.  While it’s a busy time of year, take some time to contact those people you haven’t seen in ages. That’s what I’ll be doing through the end of this year.

If you happen to want to bless people with a gift, consider two authors I know.

The first book is Chronicles of a Parky: A Lighter Look at a Shaky Existence by Ryan Oevermann. Diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease at an early age, also known as being a Parky, this is not a “woe is me” book. It’s a series of stories of dealing day to day with Parkinson’s, an irreverent look at dealing with a chronic disease as it presents challenges to movement and speech. If you know people with Parkinson’s or any other chronic disease, they may benefit from reading this book. It’s available in ebook, hardcover, or paperback at Amazon via the link above, and many other bookstores.

The second author is Steven R. Jones, a writer of Christian romance mysteries; he also happens to be my brother-in-law (and if you had told Paula her little brother would someday write romances, she’d have laughed herself silly and told you to go lie down for a while until the dizziness passed). Steve is an engineer for a company in Holland, Michigan, a true craftsman in woodworking, and able to build just about anything. He’s the strong, silent type who doesn’t say much, so we were all surprised to learn he was also a talented writer. The stories he wrote as gifts for his wife, Joy, he now shares with the world. Steve currently has a compilation of four books called Blessed, with a side of Mystery available in ebook or paperback on Amazon; it’s also available in Kindle Unlimited. It begins with The Coded Note, the story of a young woman pastor named Sarah whose knowledge of scripture helps her uncover a killer, and the other stories continue from there.

I hope you have a great Christmas—or a great Thursday for those who celebrate in other ways on other days. Talk to you again next week.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Hold on to Hope

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Basic science research is critical to finding cures for degenerative conditions and diseases; a recently published study illustrates how that happens. Researchers identified a cell receptor that regulated muscle and bone cell metabolism called GRP133 about 15 years ago. Recent research has shown that a protein called AP503 can be a receptor agonist for GRP133, necessary to activate the production of bone and muscle-cell production. Recent research in mice has shown that it can reverse osteoporosis and sarcopenia in mice. (If you’re thinking that this sounds like the GLP-1 agonists for diabetes and weight loss, you’d be correct.)

This may prove to be a whole or partial solution for osteoporosis—in about 10 or 15 years, that is. There’s a lot of testing that has to happen before it’s ready for human use. The key is to make sure that there are no other side effects of taking AP503, which could cause more serious problems than it solves. But for now, it provides hope.

One of the feelings this time of year brings is hope. No matter what your health issues are, from the inconvenient—such as going bald—or a serious disorder, we hope there will be a solution, partial or complete, as basic science continues and leads to new ways of treatment. Since the completion of the genome projects decades ago, I’ve believed that.

The key is to do everything you can do today to live long enough to see the science come to fruition with the solution.  There is hope.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: Signal Trans Target Ther. 2025 Jun 30;10:199. doi: 10.1038/s41392-025-02291-y

Have a Little Faith

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The Buffalo Bills were losing 21-0 in the second quarter this past weekend, and I had that sinking feeling that this was not going to turn out well. I told Paula I was going to do something else; I was recording the game so if they won, I’d watch it later. I recalled what quarterback Josh Allen said in the first game of the season when they came back to win late in the game: “Have a little faith.”  I had my doubts, but I kept watching. And that’s really what faith is: it’s not having no doubts but believing in spite of your doubts.

As the new year approaches, I’d guess you have some health goals for 2026. You may have set those same goals before, and they just fizzled out after a few weeks or months. I understand that because it’s happened to me more than once. Don’t let that stop you from trying again. You’ve got to believe you can do it and make that your anchor.

You already know that you’ll have days where everything goes to plan whether it’s with what you ate, how much you exercised, and did all the other things that were consistent with your goals. But you also know that some days will just not work right. Even something simple like misplacing your car keys can throw off your timing to workout before you have to be at work. You may forget your carefully planned lunch and have to wing it. You may find that your weight loss or blood pressure is not changing the way you expect. That’s when you’ve really got to believe in yourself. You will overcome as long as you keep the faith. The path may be different than you expected, or longer than you hoped, but you can do it in 2026.

The Bills came back and won 35–31. You’ll win, too, as long as you have faith.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Brain Boon, Not Brainrot

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Maybe you’ve been hearing about brainrot; if you have a kid in the house, the odds go way up. My point in mentioning this is to suggest that peanuts don’t contribute to brainrot, but may be a brain boon as I talked about on Tuesday. The question was why?

Nutrients May Hold the Key

Peanuts, as well as other nuts, are high in the amino acid l-arginine. Nitric oxide (NO) increases dilation in blood vessels which help blood flow everywhere but especially to the heart and the brain. We usually associate nitrates from vegetables with that process, but there’s another pathway which uses arginine to increase NO levels as well. That could explain the increases in blood flow to the areas of the brain. The increase in NO could also partially explain the reduction in systolic blood pressure.

In addition, the fiber in peanuts, the antioxidant properties found in the peanut skin phytonutrients, and replacing saturated fats with unsaturated fats may also have an impact on blood flow. The peanut skins contain resveratrol, a phytonutrient that has shown promise in reducing cardiovascular disease in general.

Carbohydrate intake increased while fat decreased during the eating-peanuts phase of the study. One of the key findings was that the unsaturated fats in the nuts replaced some of the saturated fats in the diet. Overall, the peanuts were beneficial.

Limitations with Hope

This was a small study with essentially healthy older adults; how that might work for people with disease must still be tested. The cost of the methodology using special MRI analytics limited how many subjects would be realistic to study, but there were at least some benefits in every category they tested. This shows that modifying the diet in just one area may be a step toward improving your health. There’s no reason not to try eating peanuts (unsalted or lightly salted is preferable) to see how it impacts us personally.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clnu.2025.10.020

Peanuts as Health Food!

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I’m Chet and I’m a salt-a-holic—specifically, nuts and especially peanuts—so when I caught a headline about peanuts in my research feed, I had to check it out. The title of the paper included the words “skin-roasted peanut consumption” so whatever the study was about, I was in. We hear a lot about peanut allergies, but today let’s look at potential health benefits.

Researchers in the Netherlands wanted to find out whether peanut consumption would have the same mpact on blood flow to the brain and improve memory as prior research had shown with other nuts. The 31 subjects, average age 67, served as their own controls. They ate 60 grams of unsalted skin-roasted peanuts (about a half cup) every day for 16 weeks, took 8 weeks off to washout any short-term benefits, and then ate no nuts for another 16 weeks.

The technology used in this study was astounding, from measuring blood flow to different areas of the brain using two different methods, food frequency questionnaires, cognitive tests, and even tests of strength. When all was said and done, there was about a 3.6% and 4.5% increase in blood flow to two regions of the brain, a 5 point drop in systolic blood pressure, and an improvement in cognitive testing.

The question is why? Why would eating roughly 340 calories of peanuts a day increase blood flow to the brain? We’ll cover that on Saturday.

In this current state of uncertain healthcare coverage, you need a personal advocate to help you make the right choices for your health. Tomorrow is the final Insiders Conference call for the year. We’re going to cover a variety of topics as well as answer Insider questions. Become an Insider by 8 p.m. tomorrow night, and you can take part.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clnu.2025.10.020

Should You Do Chair-Based Exercises?

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There are two more questions on the benefit of the chair-based exercises for getting stronger and getting ripped while doing it.

Will Chair-Based Exercise Increase Muscle Mass?

Examining the research on the benefits of chair-based exercise for increasing muscle mass seems clear. It will not—at least not to the degree the chair-based exercise ads suggest. People, specifically those over 60, will gain some strength that will help with balance and increase flexibility, but there’s no evidence it will increase muscle mass to any degree. I think that makes chair-based exercise beneficial for most people at some point in their lives.

And, by the way, how are those thighs feeling after doing one maximum set of squats every day by standing up and sitting down in a chair?

Should Men Over 50 Avoid Strenuous Exercise?

No. Whether it’s lifting weights or running a 5K, there’s no evidence that intense exercise is only for the young. What I think they were heading for was preventing age-related muscle loss called sarcopenia. Limited data shows that weight training can slow down muscle loss or reverse the loss somewhat, but it involves lifting weights, not chair exercises.

The intensity of your exercise program should always be dictated by discussions with your physician or physical therapist to plan your exercise path according to any cardiovascular disease, metabolic, or orthopedic issues you have. Chair exercises are definitely beneficial in helping you live your life, but looking lean and ripped is not going to happen. (That dream guy in the image is created with AI.)

The Problem

The companies that are promoting the apps related to chair exercises are doing a genuine disservice to potential customers. It’s a classic bait-and-switch. What they’re really promoting is intermittent fasting, focusing on the keto or Paleo diets, and tracking everything: food, exercise, sleep, and more. They offer chair exercise programs, but they begin easy. I’ve seen some of the videos later in the program, and the increase in intensity will make it difficult for people to keep up. That’s not going to happen in 15 minutes a day.

One more thing? The people in the videos are AI-enhanced. I thought something was off, but now, in very faint letters in a very small font, the use of AI-enhanced actors is admitted in the ads.

Chair-based exercise programs are legit and a great way to begin resistance training or to maintain your strength while you’re temporarily sidelined, such as after twisting an ankle. Consider it for 2026, but remember there are no quick fixes or ways around improving your health: you have to eat better, eat less, and move more.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

What Is Chair-Based Exercise?

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Time marches on and we’re counting down to the New Year; it’s time to start planning how you’re going to maintain health and fitness if you have it or improve it if you could do better. Recently, especially on click-bait websites, there are a couple of companies that are pitching chair-based exercises as a solution to increase muscle and lose weight. “Only 15 minutes per day” they say and seem to imply you can have a body that’s ripped and toned. It’s tempting.

Part of the pitch is that after 50, men should be doing more resistance exercise and leave the heavy exercise behind because “it’s a young man’s exercise and too strenuous.” The premise of chair-exercise raises questions about increasing muscle mass.

The first question is simple: Do chair-exercise programs benefit the people who utilize them? Yes. They appear to help people who are older than 60 with flexibility and balance issues. There are dozens of exercises, from the simple such as ankle flexion and extension, to something more rigorous like squats by standing up and sitting down in a chair.

There are two more questions related to chair exercises and the approach the ads take while promoting such programs; I’ll cover that on Saturday. In the meantime, find a solid chair (preferably with arms, but it’s not critical) and do as many squats—meaning standing up and sitting down—as you can, every day, in one set, from now until Saturday.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet