For how we live.
In a cluster trial across 11 Massachusetts youth clubs, 437 children aged 8–13 got a six-week behaviour programme. The between-group BMI z-score difference was −0.19 and significant; within-group changes were not.
In the 1,658-person PUSH trial, a behavioural programme with financial incentives raised urine volume but left symptomatic stone recurrences unchanged over two years — 19% against 20% with usual care.
Across 154 studies, activities that lower arousal — slow breathing, meditation — reduced anger and aggression. Venting-style activities that raise it, like hitting a bag or going for a run, did not.
Repeating 'I'm a lovable person' left people with low self-esteem feeling worse in controlled experiments. A different technique — writing about your core values — has stronger evidence behind it.
The popular 21-day rule has no basis in the habit-formation research. In the one real-world study, the time to reach automatic behaviour ranged from 18 to 254 days — and plateaued on average near 66.
Standing up every half hour is common desk advice. A meta-analysis of seven trials found brief standing breaks trim post-meal glucose a little, but short light-walking breaks cut both glucose and insulin far more.
A gratitude habit gives most people a genuine but small lift in wellbeing — a 2025 meta-analysis of nearly 25,000 people put the average effect at a modest 0.19 — and its unique benefits are probably overstated.
Overactive bladder means urgency, often with frequency and night-time waking. Guidelines start with bladder training and fluid habits, and reserve drugs and procedures for when those fall short.
In the largest head-to-head trial, a simpler therapy delivered by junior staff matched full CBT — mean difference 0.1 PHQ-9 points. A Cochrane review finds no difference between the two.
Dopamine is a learning signal that tracks surprise, not a pleasure tank you drain and refill. Stripped of the neuroscience label, the practice is ordinary stimulus control — and that narrower version has some support.
Enuresis alarms have the best evidence for a lasting cure, working in about two-thirds of children who use them. Desmopressin acts faster but the wetting tends to return when it stops.
The best evidence frames procrastination as a way of dodging bad feelings about a task, not a scheduling flaw — and following students over a year, more of it tracked with more depression, anxiety and stress.
No- and low-alcohol drinks are the fastest-growing category in the drinks trade, and one in six Americans now reaches for them. Whether they cut real drinking, or simply add to it, is barely studied.
Intensive family-based behavioural programmes produce small, real cuts in children's BMI; the newer weight-loss drugs produce much larger ones, but the weight returns when they stop.
The share of US adults who drink has fallen to a record 54%, and for the first time a near-majority think a daily drink or two is bad for them. What is driving the sober-curious turn is less obvious than the trend.
Alternating alcoholic and soft drinks is the tactic of the moment, but it has never been tested. A brief conversation with a clinician has, and it cuts drinking by about two drinks a week.
Two 2026 meta-analyses of type 2 diabetes apps found HbA1c reductions of 0.39 and 0.58 points versus usual care — modest, clinically meaningful, and consistent, though the trials vary widely in quality.
Two 2026 meta-analyses put a number on it: roughly a thousand extra steps daily in older adults and in heart patients. The catch is duration — the gains faded once the intervention stopped.
A month-long trial that blocked mobile internet improved mental health and attention, and a one-week social-media break lifted wellbeing. The wider literature is thinner.
Pooled across 23 trials, weight-loss apps beat a waitlist by about 2 kg at six months. Which features the app had made no measurable difference; adherence, which falls over time, is the real variable.
Pooled across dozens of trials, activity trackers add roughly 1,800 steps a day and about 1 kg of weight loss. Effects on blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar are small and often not significant.
A small qualitative study finds device dependency, blurred motivation and users who no longer trust their own bodies. It lands as health services keep integrating the same devices.
Clinicians rated empathy at 4.6 out of 5 and quality of information at 2.7. Every chatbot produced at least one piece of guidance judged inappropriate, overstated or inaccurate.
In a 618-person randomized trial, 27.8% of the intervention group met the sustained-remission endpoint at 24 months against 21.2% of comparators. The confidence interval nearly touches no effect.
Brown University researchers pooled 16 studies covering more than 150,000 people. The consistent finding is not detox — it is that most participants are still drinking less months later.
Half a million Ontario users held a small average gain over 24 months. The least active gained nearly 2,000 steps a day — and the most active lost almost 4,000.