Try This – 3 Big Shares for the Week

Try This community, today I have some good shares for you. We’re talking about colon cancer, thymus health, and the connection between memory and gut health.

Let’s get into it.

Number 1: Colon Cancer and Immunotherapy Drugs

Colon and rectal cancer keep coming up in my world. It's now the leading cause of cancer death in people under 50, and I've personally known too many young, healthy people who've gotten this diagnosis.

So I was moved by the story of Mrinali Dhembla, a 26-year-old who was diagnosed with stage 3 rectal cancer, only to have it completely wiped out in four months with a dual-immunotherapy regimen—no surgery, no chemo, no radiation. It's a good reminder that a lot of us in the wellness world, myself included, can have a bias against big pharma, but stories like this make you genuinely grateful for modern medicine and more motivated than ever to double down on the basics like exercise, fiber, and reducing toxins.

Number 2:  Everyone’s Talking About Thymus Health

I've been noticing thymus health come up more and more in longevity and immune health conversations lately, and there's good reason for it.

Two landmark studies just published in Nature used AI to analyze the thymus scans of over 25,000 people and found that people with healthier thymus glands had dramatically lower rates of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and all-cause mortality. For context, your thymus is the gland responsible for producing and training your T cells, the core of your immune defense, and it naturally shrinks and loses function as you age.

One of the most underappreciated drivers of thymus decline is poor sleep. Research shows that during deep sleep, your body releases growth hormone and key restorative signals that support thymic tissue repair and T cell production.

The thymus actually follows its own circadian rhythm, meaning T cell development and output are timed to the sleep-wake cycle. When that rhythm gets disrupted by late-night screen time, circadian misalignment, chronic caffeine use, or sleep apnea, cortisol levels rise and thymus activity is suppressed, accelerating the very shrinkage we want to avoid.

Protecting your sleep isn't just about energy or mood. It may be one of the most direct things you can do to keep your immune system (especially your Thymus) from aging you. 

Number 3: Gut-brain communication can reverse memory problems

I know this is a mouse study, but it's pretty wild. A new Stanford study just published in Nature found that your memory decline may not actually be starting in your brain. It may be starting in your gut.

As we age, our gut microbiome shifts in ways that trigger inflammation, which disrupts the vagus nerve's ability to signal the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for memory. When researchers gave young mice the gut microbiomes of old mice, the young mice started performing on memory tests like old animals.

Then things got really interesting. When they stimulated the vagus nerve in the older animals, the cognitive decline reversed!

We tend to assume memory decline is just a brain problem. Turns out it may be a gut problem. It's a powerful reminder that everything we talk about for gut health in this newsletter, more fiber, fermented foods, less processed food, and reducing our toxic load, is also one of the most direct investments we can make in our brains.

See you next week for more shares. 

Much love,
Dhru Purohit  

The information in this newsletter is for educational purposes only and should not be construed as medical advice; please consult a qualified healthcare professional before making any health-related decisions.