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Despite these troubling trends, there’s positive news: overall cancer survival rates continue to improve, thanks to advances in early detection, targeted therapies, and lifestyle interventions. The U.S. cancer mortality rate has dropped by 34% since 1991, largely due to declines in smoking rates and better screening practices.
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When these social networks shrink or become less diverse, women lose the social scaffolding that supports healthy eating patterns. They’re also more likely to use food-related activities as ways to connect socially, such as cooking for others, sharing meals, or discussing nutrition, so social isolation cuts off these pathways to healthy eating.
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Used regularly by wellness fanatics such as Gabby Bernstein, Lauren Bosstik, and (of course) yours truly, the HigherDose Infrared PEMF Mat is simultaneously calming yet energizing, and it significantly improves my sleep, mood, recovery, and overall well-being.
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Meal prep, cardio, sleep…sometimes the healthiest activities are also the most time-consuming. If you crave healthy habits that won’t gobble up your entire day, a study in Nature Medicine1
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Creatine is the No. 1 supplement you should think of when it comes to body recomposition. Taking it alongside a strength training routine (no matter if you’re starting with bodyweight, 5 pound dumbbells, or 45 pound ones) helps you build more muscle in a shorter period of time than exercise alone1
† Benefits and weekly transformations assume daily use and are evidence-based estimates rooted in clinical research at the ingredient level. Individual results may vary. Optimal results occur when used alongside healthful nutrition, exercise, and personalized lifestyle practices. If you are pregnant, breastfeeding, or taking medications, consult with your doctor before starting a supplement routine. It is always optimal to consult with a health care provider when considering what supplements are right for you.
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He wasn’t arrogant. He was calm. Confident, even. The numbers were solid. The products were respected. Customers seemed loyal. From the inside, everything felt fine, and that was the problem. Stability is not the same thing as longevity anymore—not even close.
According to global consultancy EY, the average lifespan of a U.S. S&P 500 company has dropped from about 67 years to roughly 15. That’s not a blip. That’s a warning. Markets move faster, customers change their minds quicker, and yesterday’s advantage becomes today’s assumption. Companies don’t fail because leaders aren’t smart. They fail because leaders wait too long to matter again.
You can build something excellent and still fade. In today’s high-velocity marketplace, success doesn’t come from protecting what works. It comes from anticipating disruption and acting before you’re forced to. The companies that last don’t just sell products—they solve urgent problems in ways that make them the obvious choice.
In my experience, whether leaders were building something new or pulling an organization back from the edge, the ones who succeeded shared a handful of traits—not flashy ones, but practical and human ones. They showed up long before a crisis made them necessary.
Here are seven leadership moves that help companies last when everything else changes:
You can’t slow progress. You can only decide whether it runs you over or carries you forward. The leaders who build companies that last don’t cling to business as usual. They challenge it, speed up change when others hesitate, and create relevance, not just results.
The best part? This isn’t reserved for unicorn founders or massive enterprises. Any leader, right where you are, can develop these traits. The question isn’t whether disruption is coming. It’s whether you’ll lead it.
Go inside one interesting founder-led company each day to find out how its strategy works, and what risk factors it faces. Sign up for 1 Smart Business Story from Inc. on Beehiiv.
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Peter Economy
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Carbs have long been cast as the villain in health circles, especially for women. From low-carb fads to fear of weight gain, many are quick to cut carbs in pursuit of health. But new research offers a compelling reason to reconsider: The right carbs may actually help you age well.
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Is “toxic mold syndrome” a real thing? What do we do about toxic mold contamination of food?
In recent years, mold has been blamed for all sorts of “vague and subjective” symptoms, but we have little scientific evidence that mold should be implicated. However, this “concept of toxic mold syndrome has permeated the public consciousness,” perpetuated by disreputable predatory practices of those making money testing homes for mold spores or testing people’s urine or blood. But all these tests are said to “further propagate misinformation and inflict unnecessary and often exorbitant costs on patients desperate for a clinical diagnosis, right or wrong, for their constellation of maladies…The continued belief in this myth is perpetuated by those charlatans who believe that measles vaccines cause autism, that homeopathy works, that fluoride in the water should be removed….”
Mold toxin contamination of food, however, has emerged as a legitimate issue of serious concern, and mycotoxins are perhaps even more important than other contaminants that might make their way into the food supply. Hundreds of different types have been identified, but only one has been classified as a known human carcinogen, and that’s aflatoxin. The ochratoxin I’ve previously discussed is a possible human carcinogen, but we know aflatoxin causes cancer in human beings. In fact, aflatoxins are amongst the most powerful known carcinogens.
It has been estimated that about a fifth of all liver cancer cases may be attributable to aflatoxins. “Since liver cancer is the third-leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, and mortality rapidly follows diagnosis, the contribution of aflatoxins to this deadly cancer is significant.” And once aflatoxin makes it into the food, there is almost nothing we can do to remove it. Cooking, for example, doesn’t help. Indeed, as shown below and at 1:50 in my video Should We Be Concerned About Aflatoxin?, once it makes it into crops or into the meat, dairy, and eggs from animals consuming those crops, it’s too late. So, we have to prevent contamination in the first place, which is what we’ve been doing for decades in the United States. Because of government regulations, “companies in developed countries…are ‘always sampling’ for aflatoxin,” resulting in nearly $1 billion in losses every year. That may get even worse if climate change exacerbates aflatoxin contamination in the Midwest Corn Belt.
So, on a consumer level, it is more of a public health problem in the less industrialized world, such as in African countries, where conditions are ripe and farmers can’t afford to throw away $1 billion in contaminated crops. Aflatoxin remains a public health threat in Africa, Southeast Asia, and rural China, affecting more than half of humanity. This explains why the prevalence of liver cancer in those areas may be 30 times higher, yet it is not a major problem in the United States or Europe.
Only about 1% of Americans have detectable levels of aflatoxins in their bloodstream. Why not 0%? The U.S. Food and Drug Administration works to ensure that levels of exposure to these toxins are kept as low as practical, not as low as possible. In California, for instance, there has been an increase in “unacceptable aflatoxin levels” in pistachios, almonds, and figs. Unacceptable in Europe, that is, so it affects our ability to export, but not necessarily unacceptable for U.S. consumers, as we allow twice as much aflatoxin contamination.
Figs are unique since they’re “allowed to fully ripen and semidry on the tree.” This makes them “particularly susceptible to aflatoxin production.” It would be interesting to know about the fig-consuming habits of the 1% of Americans who were positive for the toxin. If figs were to blame, I’d encourage people to diversify their dried fruit consumption, but nuts are so good for us that we really want to keep them in our diets. The cardiovascular health benefits we get from nuts outweigh their carcinogenic effects; nut consumption prevents thousands of strokes and heart attacks for every one case of liver cancer. “Thus, the population health benefits provided by increased nut consumption clearly outweigh the risks associated with increased aflatoxin B1 exposure.”
So, we’re left with aflatoxin being mostly a problem in the developing world, and, because of that, it “remains a largely and rather shamefully ignored global health issue….” Where attention has been paid, it has been largely driven by the need to meet stringent import regulations on mycotoxin contamination in the richer nations of the world, rather than to protect the billions of people exposed on a daily basis.
Doctor’s Note
This is the last video in a four-part series on mold toxins. If you missed the others, check the related posts below.
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Michael Greger M.D. FACLM
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Here’s why this scary finding could prove very helpful for disease prevention.
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The overall cost-benefit ratio for mycotoxins depends on which food is contaminated.
Ochratoxin has been described as toxic to the immune system, developing fetus, kidneys, and nervous system, as well as being carcinogenic, but that is in animal studies. Ochratoxin “causes kidney toxicity in certain animal species, but there is little documented evidence of adverse effects in humans.” That’s why it’s only considered a possible human carcinogen.
Big Ag assures that current ochratoxin levels are safe, even among those who eat a lot of contaminated foods. The worst-case scenario may be young children eating a lot of oat-based cereals, but, even then, “their lifetime cancer risk is negligible.” Individuals arguing against regulatory standards suggest we can eat more than 42 cups of oatmeal a day and not worry about it. Where do they get these kinds of estimates?
They determine the so-called benchmark dose in animals—the dose of the toxin that gives a 10% increase in pathology—then, because one would want to err on the side of caution, divide that dose by 500 as a kind of safety fudge factor to develop the tolerable daily intake. For cancer risk, you can find the tumor dose—the dose that increases tumor incidence in lab animals by 5%—and extrapolate down to the ”negligible cancer risk intake,” effectively incorporating a 5,000-fold safety factor, as seen below and at 1:28 in my video Should We Be Concerned About the Effects of Ochratoxin?.
It seems kind of arbitrary, right? But what else are you going to do? You can’t just intentionally feed people the stuff and see what happens—but people eat it regularly. Can we just follow people and their diets over time and see if those who eat more whole grains, like oats, for example, are more likely to have cancer or live shorter lives?
What is the association between whole grain intake and all-cause, cardiovascular, and cancer mortality? Every additional ounce of whole grains eaten a day is associated with not only a lower risk for cancer mortality but also a lower risk of dying from all causes put together. Below and at 2:05 in my video are findings from all the big cancer studies. Every single one trended towards lower cancer risk.
The bottom line is that you don’t find adverse effects confirmed in these population studies. This is not to say ochratoxin is necessarily harmless, but “any such risk does not outweigh the known benefits of wholegrain consumption.” In fact, healthy constituents of the whole grains themselves, like their antioxidants, may directly reduce the impacts of mycotoxins by protecting cells from damage. So, eating lots of fruits and vegetables may also help. Either way, “an overall healthy diet can play a significant role in mitigating the risk of contaminants in grain.”
In summary, healthy foods like whole grains are good, but just not as good as they could be because of ochratoxin, whereas less healthful foods, like wine and pork, are worse because of the mycotoxin, as shown below and at 2:52 in my video. Ochratoxin was detected, for example, in 44% of tested pork.
Doctor’s Note
This is the third video in a four-part series on mold toxins. If you missed the first two, see Ochratoxin in Breakfast Cereals and Friday Favorites: Ochratoxin and Breakfast Cereals, Herbs, Spices, and Wine.
Should We Be Concerned About Aflatoxin? is coming up next.
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Michael Greger M.D. FACLM
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What if the secret to turning back the clock was as simple as lacing up your sneakers? Research suggests 1
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When I lace up for a workout, I usually gravitate toward strength training, pilates, or the occasional jog. But none of that prepared me for the reality check from my fitness tracker: a VO2 max score of 36. Fair. Not terrible, but not great either—especially for someone who writes about health and fitness for a living.
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If you’re still skeptical about the power of red light therapy, I get it. I was hesitant, too, before I used Bon Charge’s Red Light Face Mask for one month. During the 30-day experiment, my skin completely transformed to reveal a brighter, more even complexion—and it was easily the best thing I’ve done for my skin years.
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What can reishi mushrooms, shiitake mushroom extracts, and whole, powdered white mushrooms do for cancer patients?
“A regular intake of mushrooms can make us healthier, fitter, and happier, and help us live longer,” but what is the evidence for all that? “Mushrooms are widely cited for their medicinal qualities, yet very few human intervention studies have been done using contemporary guidelines.”
There is a compound called lentinan, extracted from shiitake mushrooms. To get about an ounce, you have to distill around 400 pounds of shiitakes, about 2,000 cups of mushrooms. Researchers injected the compound into cancer patients to see what happens. The pooled response from a dozen small clinical trials found that the objective response rate was significantly improved when lentinan was added to chemotherapy regimens for lung cancer. “Objective response rate” means, for example, tumor shrinkage, but what we really care about is survival and quality of life. Does it actually make cancer patients live any longer or any better? Well, those in the lentinan group suffered less chemo-related toxicity to their gut and bone marrow, so that alone might be reason enough to use it. But what about improving survival?
I was excited to see that lentinan may significantly improve survival rates for a type of leukemia. Indeed, researchers found that adding lentinan to the standards of care increased average survival, reduced cachexia (cancer-associated muscle wasting), and improved cage-side health. Wait, what? This was improved survival for brown Norwegian rats, so that the so-called clinical benefit only applies if you’re a rat or a veterinarian.
A compilation of 17 actual human clinical studies did find improvements in one-year survival in advanced cancer patients but no significant difference in the likelihood of living out to two years. Even the compilations of studies that purport that lentinan offers a significant advantage in terms of survival are just talking about statistical significance. As you can see below and at 2:15 in my video White Button Mushrooms for Prostate Cancer, it’s hard to even tell these survival curves apart.
Lentinan improved survival by an average of 25 days. Now, 25 days is 25 days, but we “should evaluate assertions made by companies about the miraculous properties of medicinal mushrooms very critically.”
Lentinan has to be injected intravenously. What about mushroom extract supplements you can just take yourself? Researchers have noted that shiitake mushroom extract is available online for the treatment of prostate cancer for approximately $300 a month, so it’s got to be good, right? Men who regularly eat mushrooms do seem to be at lower risk for getting prostate cancer—and apparently not just because they eat less meat or consume more fruits and vegetables in general. So, why not give a shiitake mushroom extract a try? Because it doesn’t work. On its own, it is “ineffective in the treatment of clinical prostate cancer.” Researchers wrote that “the results demonstrate that claims for CAM [complementary and alternative medicine], particularly for herbal and food supplement remedies, can be easily and quickly tested.” Put something to the test? What a concept! Maybe it should be required before individuals spend large amounts of money on unproven treatments, or, in this case, a disproven treatment.
What about God’s mushroom (also known as the mushroom of life) or reishi mushrooms? “Conclusions: No significant anticancer effects were observed”—not even a single partial response. Are we overthinking it? Plain white button mushroom extracts can kill off prostate cancer cells, at least in a petri dish, but so could the fancy God’s mushroom, but that didn’t end up working in people. You don’t know if plain white button mushrooms work on real people until you put them to the test.
What I like about this study is that the researchers didn’t use a proprietary extract. They just used regular whole mushrooms, dried and powdered, the equivalent of a half cup to a cup and a half of fresh white button mushrooms a day, in other words, a totally doable amount. The researchers gave them to men with “biochemically recurrent prostate cancer”—the men had already gotten a prostatectomy or radiation in an attempt to cut or burn out all the cancer, but it returned and started growing, as evidenced by a rise in PSA levels, an indicator of prostate cancer progression.
Of the 26 patients who had gotten the button mushroom powder, 4 appeared to respond, meaning they got a drop in PSA levels by more than 50% after starting the mushrooms, as you can see here and at 4:31 in my video.
In the next graphic, below and at 4:22, you can see where the four men who responded started out in the months leading up to starting the mushrooms. Patient 2 (“Pt 2”) was my favorite. He had an exponential increase in PSA levels for a year, then he started some plain white mushrooms, and boom! His PSA level dropped to zero and stayed down. A similar response was seen with Patient 1. Patient 4 had a partial response, before his cancer took off again, and Patient 3 appeared to have a delayed partial response.
Now, in the majority of cases, PSA levels continued to rise, not dipping at all. But even if there is only a 1-in-18 chance you’ll be like Patients 1 and 2, seen below and at 5:12, you may get a prolonged, complete response that continues.
We aren’t talking about weighing the risks of some toxic chemotherapy for the small chance of benefit, but just eating some inexpensive, easy, tasty plain white mushrooms every day. Yes, the study didn’t have a control group, so it may have just been a coincidence, but rising PSAs in post-prostatectomy patients are almost always indicators of cancer progression. And, what’s the downside of adding white button mushrooms to your diet?
In these two patients, their PSA levels became undetectable, suggesting that the cancer disappeared altogether. They had already gone through surgery, had gotten their primary tumor removed, along with their entire prostate, and had already gone through radiation to try to clean up any cancer that remained, and yet the cancer appeared to be surging back—until, that is, they started a little plain mushroom powder.
Doctor’s Note
If you missed the previous blog, check out Medicinal Mushrooms for Cancer Survival.
Also check out Friday Favorites: Mushrooms for Prostate Cancer and Cancer Survival.
For more on mushrooms, see Breast Cancer vs. Mushrooms and Is It Safe to Eat Raw Mushrooms?.
For more videos on prostate cancer, check the related posts below.
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Michael Greger M.D. FACLM
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If the goal was to spark a reaction among the denizens of the biggest city in the U.S., then a recent advertising campaign that implores new parents to “pick your baby” has been a remarkable success.
Recently, ads for Nucleus Genomics, a New York City-based startup that offers what it calls IVF “for longevity,” began appearing in subway stations across the city. Images of ethnically diverse, healthy, and happy babies appeared above the words “IQ is 50% genetic,” and “height is 80% genetic” on banner ads hanging at Broadway-Lafayette station in Lower Manhattan. Other ads tell parents to “have your best baby” and to “have a healthier baby.” The campaign also points the public to a website: Pickyourbaby.com. (A Nucleus spokesperson told Inc that NYC’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority initially rejected the ads, requiring tweaks to copy and images before approval.)
Nucleus was founded in 2021 by Kian Sadeghi, who describes the company’s mission as “IVF for genetic optimization.” The company offers “advanced embryo testing” that allows parents to lower their children’s chance of disease, it claims. So far, Nucleus has raised $32 million from a variety of investors, including Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six and Founders Fund.
The reaction to Nucleus’s campaign has been mostly critical. Social media users accused the company of promoting a sci-fi-tinted version of eugenics—the pseudoscience that promotes racial purity through selective breeding.
However, Sadeghi has a different perspective. He tells Inc. the campaign was meant to cultivate a deeper understanding of genetics for prospective parents. “Some of the reasons why people get scared about genetics and the randomness of genetics is because they don’t understand it,” Sadeghi says.
Nucleus’ subway campaign is just one example of how tech startups are intentionally rage-baiting the public to promote their businesses. The recent glut of AI startups has led several new firms to lean into the strategy to distinguish themselves from the competition.
Earlier this year, another slate of ads run by the AI chatbot company Friend was defaced across the city by various detractors. The ads were sparse and featured a definition of the word “friend” alongside its flagship product, a necklace that listens to users and responds via a corresponding app. Its critics accused the company of promoting “AI sycophancy,” the kind of behavior that has led some users into codependent and sometimes delusional relationships with chatbots.
Another AI startup, Cluely, raised eyebrows earlier this year after its founders introduced the app by saying it lets users “cheat on everything.” (Cluely has since pivoted to a note-taking product, but still promotes its “cheating on everything” ethos.) In August, the company purchased a billboard in Times Square. But instead of putting up a high-production-value ad, it ran simple black-on-white text with the tone of a meme, from the POV of the founder Roy Lee: “hi i’m roy im 21 this was very expensive pls buy my thing.” One advertising industry website called the stunt “brutally honest.” And Artisan AI, a company that builds agentic AI for sales, sparked a high-profile reprimand from Senator Bernie Sanders in October over its “stop hiring humans” campaign.
Nucleus’ says it drew inspiration for its campaign from another recent ad blitz: Levi’s campaign with actress Sydney Sweeney featured the tagline “Sydney has great jeans.” The ads sparked an uproar about genetics, race, and societal beauty standards. However, the company’s presentation of ethnically diverse babies seems to be directly responding to the backlash against the Levi’s campaign for promoting white beauty standards. Signs taped around specific downtown neighborhoods offer a riff on the Levi’s slogan: “these babies have great genes,” they read. Before the launch of the Nucleus campaign, Sadeghi told Inc, “We expect it to incite conversation. We expect it to incite curiosity, and we expect people to start engaging.”
A spokesperson for the firm lauded the campaign in an email on Friday, writing: “Nucleus’ campaign has driven +150% surge in sales across its products and 8M impressions over social media this week, despite being met with negative backlash.”
While it’s unclear whether or not it always works for brands that intentionally incite public anger, research indicates that people are inclined to engage with content online when it defies or challenges their personal views.
Nucleus’s metrics make for further promotional fodder, but it’s also spotlighted the company’s legal troubles. In October, Nucleus was sued by another IVF company, Genomic Prediction, for allegedly stealing trade secrets. So far, Nucleus has prevailed. Genomic Prediction’s request for injunctive relief was denied in federal district court last week, lawyers for Nucleus noted in a blog post. Sadeghi didn’t respond to Inc’s request for comment on the lawsuit, but he briefly took to X to address the outrage over the company’s ad campaign and to briefly remark on the legal victory. “To the mob trying to cancel Nucleus,” he wrote on Sunday. “Keep tweeting. Stay mad. We’ll keep building and serving patients. P.S. We won the injunction.”
The final deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, December 12, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.
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Sam Blum
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