For how we live.
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.
The IARC calls night shift work probably carcinogenic. A 2026 meta-analysis of nurses shows why 'probably' is careful: the breast cancer signal appears only after decades, and shrinks to nothing once bias is corrected.
A network meta-analysis of 24 randomised trials ranks oral dutasteride first on 24-week hair density. The adverse-effect literature behind these drugs is separately, and seriously, contested.
Two Cochrane reviews back scopolamine and first-generation antihistamines for preventing motion sickness. Both found the same gap: not a single randomised trial has looked at relieving symptoms already under way.
A Cochrane review of 64 trials found acetazolamide cut the risk of acute mountain sickness by about half. It is a genuine drug effect, not a folk remedy — and it is a prescription decision, not a supplement.
A network meta-analysis found six treatments clearing the clinically important threshold in the short term. It also graded 98.6% of the evidence very low certainty, and found nothing that held up past a year.
Tirzepatide topped weight loss at 14.9%. But only subcutaneous semaglutide showed a mortality benefit — and no drug moved the needle on quality of life or kidney failure.
Pooling 2,906 participants, researchers ranked how antidiabetic drugs affect fat versus lean body mass. Exercise blunted liraglutide's muscle loss; metformin, insulin, and DPP4 inhibitors barely moved either measure.
A network meta-analysis of 41,084 surgical patients over 60 ranked 52 drug interventions. Dexmedetomidine held up after high-risk trials were excluded; almost nothing changed length of stay or mortality.
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.
Pooling 151 studies and 58,534 participants across 30 drugs, researchers ranked antidepressants by physiological side effects rather than efficacy. Some drugs raised cholesterol while reducing body weight.
A BMJ network meta-analysis of 6,582 adults finds alternate day fasting the only intermittent method that beat continuous calorie restriction — by 1.29 kg, mostly in short trials.