For how we live.
The stitch has a clinical name — exercise-related transient abdominal pain — and decades of study. It is probably not trapped wind or a cramping diaphragm, and a big meal beforehand makes it far more likely.
A matched study compared recreational runners, non-runners and adults with obesity, one triplet at a time. The first two groups were indistinguishable on structure and function. The third was not.
A meta-analysis of 51 studies found no effect on race time or time to exhaustion. The 2026 review of post-exercise compression for soreness rated its own evidence very low certainty.
A network meta-analysis compared the ways athletes split training across intensity zones. Every credible interval crossed zero — and the model ranked first for aerobic capacity was not the popular one.
Across 111 runners completing up to four trials each, two consumer devices tracked the direction of fluid loss reasonably well but missed the amount by 25% to 33% on average.