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Try This: 5 Things You Need to See This Week

Diabetes prevention, LDL hacks, good news for dog lovers, and more...

Author

Dhru Purohit
July 11, 2025

Dhru here!

Coming to your inbox with five fun and interesting things (tips, studies, good news, and more) you’ve got to see this week! 

Today at a glance: 

  • Lifestyle Beats Drugs: When drug companies are forced to compete against lifestyle, surprising things happen.

  • Kind-of-Wild Coffee Hack: My friend taught me a hack that lowered his LDL cholesterol by 22%. I’m trying it out now.

  • Attention Blueberry Lovers: My favorite, nutrient-dense blueberries now ship to all 50 states.

  • Are You a Dog Lover? Owning a dog can help your healthspan in a major way. 🧠🐶

  • Does Your Produce Keep Rotting? Super-simple storage tips that could save your fruits and veggies.

    Let’s get into it… 

Shout Out to Our Sponsor Bon Charge Who Helps Keep this Newsletter Free

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New Study Alert: Diet and Exercise Are Even More Powerful Than Drugs in Keeping People Diabetes-Free

In a 20-year follow-up from the US Diabetes Prevention Program (a publicly funded randomized controlled trial), researchers found that an intensive lifestyle program (i.e., changing diet and exercise) beat out metformin (a common diabetes drug) when it came to the development of diabetes and staying diabetes-free.

In the dietary and exercise intervention group, type 2 diabetes incidence was reduced by a whopping 58 percent while the metformin group saw a  31 percent reduction compared to placebo. The lifestyle intervention group also stayed diabetes-free for 3.5 years—that’s an entire year longer than the metformin group at 2.5 years.

Why does this matter? I've written about this in the past, but the truth is that we rarely require drug companies to test their drugs against lifestyle interventions.

This leaves many doctors and researchers with the false impression that drugs always beat out lifestyle, when the truth is that most drugs were never tested against major lifestyle interventions to begin with. This study, which is publicly funded, is a rare exception and something that should be celebrated!

Look, I’m definitely not against prescription medications, but the bottom line is this study shows that lifestyle changes are by far the best way to prevent diabetes. And most importantly, these long-term changes will save millions of lives and save countless people hundreds and thousands of dollars in medical costs (and potentially save our government billions of dollars too). 

A while back, I was chatting with my friend Max Lugavere about something pretty mind-blowing: unfiltered coffee can raise your LDL thanks to something called cafestol, a diterpene known to raise cholesterol. 

A study found that those drinking coffee brewed using a French press and then filtered through a paper filter had lower LDL cholesterol than those who did not filter their coffee at all. (And yes, a French press is a form of unfiltered coffee, which I didn’t know.)

Max started to use a paper filter for his coffee and was able to lower his LDL by 22 percent! 

I'm finally getting around to doing the actual experiment of using a paper filter with my espresso and glass AeroPress coffee maker and will report back in a future newsletter after doing some blood work. If it works, this could be a really good hack for any coffee lovers worried about their LDL.

I looked up how to use a paper filter with a French press and found two videos for anyone curious about trying this experiment.

This video uses a good old-fashioned paper filter that you would normally use with your coffee maker. And this video showcases a paper filter that is actually made for a French press, which I have not personally used myself but could be worth looking into!

Bonus: If you can, try to pick unbleached filters over bleached filters.

Try This readers, you’ve likely read about my favorite, best-tasting organic blueberries before, and now I have some good news for you. 

They are now shipping their frozen blueberries to all 50 states! These are hands down the best blueberries I’ve ever tasted. They’re not like regular organic blueberries from the grocery store, which are typically grown in hydroponic farms and machine-harvested. King Grove blueberries are grown in actual, living soil: rich, biodiverse earth on a restored citrus grove. A single spoonful of this soil contains over eight billion microbes—that’s more microbes than there are people on the planet. 

Now, they only ship 20 lb. boxes of blueberries, but don’t worry, because even though that sounds like a lot, it isn’t. Here’s how much space you’ll actually need in your freezer. 

If you have about ⅓ cup a day of frozen berries, this will last you approximately six months. But I eat so many of these berries, I would probably go through them a lot quicker. Plus, all my friends and family end up eating a bunch too!

Also, I have no formal affiliation with this farm; I’m just a big fan of how much they care about putting love into the blueberries they grow! 

If any of you have fur babies, you might want to squeeze them a little tighter for all the health benefits they’re giving you—one of them being support for dementia prevention!

Could it be because dogs typically get us out walking and socializing? Maybe! That means steps, vitamin D, community engagement… all beneficial for brain health. If you’re thinking about getting a dog, consider this strong evidence in favor of that decision. 

Recently, I noticed a bunch of produce in my house was going moldy pretty fast. I couldn't figure out what was going on. My wife found this tip from @eatinghealthytoday, and we definitely have been breaking a few of these rules, which could explain the moldy produce. I put these tips into ChatGPT and asked it to fact-check them, and it seems like there's some solid science around these recommendations, so we’ll definitely be giving it a shot to preserve our fruits and veggies as long as possible. 

You might want to give it a try, too, if your produce seems to be going bad fast. Preventing food waste and saving money on your produce—that’s a win-win. 

See you next week, 
Dhru Purohit


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