Charlie Brown's Health Food Ltd

12/02/2025

Did You Know You Can Improve Your Cholesterol With A Little Black Seed?
This tiny black seed can safely improve your cholesterol.
Black cumin (Nigella sativa), also known simply as black seed, can safely improve your cholesterol according to this just published study.
Black seed is a powerful herb with a multitude of uses. This new double-blind study set out to confirm its benefits for cholesterol. It gave either no treatment or 5g of black seed powder a day for 8 weeks to people with borderline and high cholesterol who were not being treated with medication.
The black seed was able to significantly lower total cholesterol, the heart harmful LDL cholesterol and triglycerides while significantly increasing the heart healthy HDL cholesterol: everything you would want a cholesterol treatment to do. Actually, there’s one more thing you would want it to do: you would want it to do all this safely. The black seed did that too. There were no adverse effects.
This study adds black seed to the list of herbs that can safely improve cholesterol.

12/01/2025

New Study Supports Vitamin K For Your Bones
Though it gets a lot less attention than calcium or vitamin D, without vitamin K, your bones would be like chalk. This new study helps explain why.
Your bones need calcium, but they also need a hormone called osteocalcin. Osteocalcin helps attract and bind calcium to your bones. And osteocalcin is produced by vitamin K.
This new systematic review and meta-analysis of the role of vitamin K included 9 controlled studies of 2,570 postmenopausal women with osteoporosis. The form of vitamin K used was K2, a form of vitamin K that is produced by bacteria in the gut.
The meta-analysis showed that vitamin K significantly increased osteocalcin compared to a placebo, indicating that vitamin K can promote bone formation. Vitamin K also significantly increased bone-specific alkaline phosphatase, a key marker of bone formation.
This study supports the role of vitamin K in improving bone formation in postmenopausal women with osteoporosis.

11/26/2025

Tart Cherry Extract Reduces Uric Acid and Inflammation
High levels of uric acid can lead to all kinds of problems. The evidence is mounting that cherries can help.
Having too much uric acid can lead to painful gout. Less known is that, even in the absence of gout, it can cause systemic inflammation, high blood pressure, hypothyroidism and chronic kidney disease.
Tart cherries have been shown in a number of studies to reduce uric acid and improve suffering from gout (Arthritis Rheum 2013;65:1135-6; Arthritis Rheum 2012;64:4004-11).
This new double-blind study gave 10 healthy people either a placebo or 500mg of tart cherry (Prunus cerasus L.) extract powder a day for 28 days.
At the end of the study, while uric acid levels had continued to creep up in the placebo group, in the cherry extract group, they had dropped significantly by 37.4% compared to placebo.
As for inflammation, CRP levels were unchanged in the placebo group but significantly improved in the cherry extract group. Compared to placebo the improvement was 23%. CRP is a highly sensitive biomarker of systemic inflammation. This degree of improvement is clinically relevant, meaning tart cherry extract could benefit cardiovascular disease and inflammatory conditions.
In addition to lower uric acid levels benefiting kidney health, the study also noted a significant reduction in creatine levels that are suggestive of improved kidney function.
The tart cherry extract accomplished all of this while being safe to take.
This study adds to the evidence that tart cherry is a safe way to lower CRP and uric acid, potentially improving inflammatory conditions, gout and kidney health.

11/25/2025

Can Probiotics Help People with Diabetes?

People with type 2 diabetes have insulin resistance, pancreatic β-cell dysfunction, and elevated blood glucose. Taking probiotics may help improve all three, according to a new study.
Recently, surprising research has suggested that, by modulating gut bacteria, probiotics can help regulate blood sugar and modulate type 2 diabetes.
This new double-blind study gave 42 type 2 diabetics who were on the drug metformin either a placebo or a Bifidobacterium probiotic for 6 weeks. The specific strain of probiotic was Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis TISTR 2591 (BA-2591).
In both the metformin + placebo group and the metformin + probiotic group, fasting blood glucose continued to increase. But it rose significantly less in the probiotic group: 1.143 mg/dL versus 12.57 mg/dL. Insulin resistance also increased significantly less in the probiotic group.
And that’s not all. While pancreatic β-cell function continued to worsen in the placebo group, it significantly improved in the probiotic group. This finding is important, since β-cells produce insulin.
An important additional benefit is that the probiotics were safe: there were no significant adverse gastrointestinal events, and kidney and liver enzymes were unaffected.
This study suggests that probiotics may have a role to play in safely managing type 2 diabetes.

11/11/2025

Closed Remembrance Day-November 11th- reopen tomorrow-Wednesday 9:30am. Lest We Forget

11/01/2025

Today is November's Senior's Day. 15% off all items NOT ALREADY on special. Come in, out of the rain and find what you need to support your body and your life.

Send a message to learn more

09/30/2025

It’s all in the post.

09/26/2025

We have an array of tasty and healthy teas, coffees, mushroom drinks and more…