For how we live.
A meta-analysis of 78 studies found the menstrual cycle has at most a trivial effect on performance. A randomised trial found timing strength training to cycle phase built no more muscle than training consistently.
A 2023 network meta-analysis of 270 trials ranked isometric exercise first for lowering resting blood pressure. Two 2026 analyses, using ambulatory monitoring and a larger trial set, rank it among the weakest.
A meta-analysis of 116 randomised trials found weight, waist and body fat falling steadily up to 300 minutes a week. In one 24-week trial, 48% of participants compensated by about 308 kcal a day.
Falls are the leading injury killer of older adults. The intervention with the strongest evidence is unglamorous — exercise that trains balance, gait and strength — and the trial data behind it is unusually solid.
Observational studies tie fitness to slower cognitive decline. When researchers randomise older adults to exercise, the cognitive payoff shrinks — in a Cochrane review of healthy people, to nothing.
Women who reported vigorous physical activity had a lower arousal index, less time awake after falling asleep, and more total sleep time. The same association didn't hold for arousal index in men.
A review explains why HIIT and CrossFit-style training can push exercise-induced muscle breakdown to the point of kidney injury, and what helps catch it earlier.
A four-arm randomised trial in 112 young women tested whether high-intensity circuit training and sleep-health counselling add up. On objective measures they did — by minutes.
Mindfulness, yoga, exercise and positive psychology landed within a narrow band of each other. Only combining exercise with a psychological approach pulled clear, and nature-based programmes did not beat controls.
Seventy-three trials, and a familiar pattern: the benefit versus no treatment shrinks by a third when only the best-conducted studies are counted. The head-to-head comparisons rest on a few hundred people.
A 240-woman randomised trial compared three months of hatha yoga with a time-matched conditioning programme. On every sleep measure, the two groups moved together.