For how we live.
Consumer wellness claims, tested against the evidence.
US regulators class MSG as generally recognised as safe, and when the symptoms are tested under blinded conditions they largely disappear. The clearest signal is a nocebo effect, not the additive.
Short sleep is tied to obesity, and experiments suggest the link is partly causal. Adults told to sleep longer ate about 270 fewer calories a day; dieters who slept less lost far less of their weight as fat.
Early studies made elderberry look promising for colds, and sales topped $100 million. But the trials are small, and the most rigorous one — a randomised flu trial in emergency patients — found no benefit at all.
Echinacea is a pharmacy staple every winter. But a Cochrane review of 24 trials found no reliable treatment benefit, and the largest trial shaved barely half a day off a cold — a difference too small to be sure was real.
No trial shows chicken soup cures or shortens a cold. But two small, decades-old studies found it clears nasal mucus faster than plain hot water and calms one inflammatory cell in the lab — a case for comfort, not cure.
A 21,442-person trial of cocoa flavanol extract missed its main heart target. The blood-pressure effect is real but small — and nearly half of dark chocolate products exceeded a strict lead limit.
In people who are iron-deficient without anaemia, supplements ease self-reported fatigue in trials — but do nothing for objective exercise capacity, and the benefit hinges on being iron-deficient, not just tired.
For most people eating normally, added electrolytes do little, and plain water rehydrates fine for ordinary exercise. The clearest endurance danger is drinking too much — and the proven use is illness, not the gym.
For a healthy adult an occasional can is unlikely to harm. But in a randomised trial, 32 ounces raised blood pressure and prolonged the heart's QT interval more than placebo — and paediatricians say no to children.
Two meta-analyses of dozens of randomised trials agree that about 3 grams a day of oat beta-glucan lowers LDL cholesterol by a small, real amount. The effect is genuine, modest, and dose-dependent.
Plain fizzy water hydrates about as well as still water and is far less corrosive to teeth than juice or soft drinks. The cautions are narrow: flavoured versions and cola, not carbonation itself.
Air-popped popcorn is a whole grain, high in fibre and low in fat — a legitimately good snack. What turns it unhealthy is butter, oil, salt and portion size, not the corn itself.
For people whose pancreas cannot make enzymes, replacement therapy is proven in randomised trials. For healthy people with bloating, the flagship study is a single-arm survey of customers who bought the product online.
The warning that olive oil's low smoke point makes it unsafe to fry with is largely wrong. Oxidative stability, not smoke point, is what matters, and olive oil is among the more heat-resistant common oils.
A 2025 meta-analysis of 10 trials found small, short-term reductions in weight and BMI — but the studies were heterogeneous, and the viral single trial that fuelled the hype is one small study, not a settled result.
The popular claim is that a shot before meals fires up digestion. The controlled measurement shows vinegar slows the stomach down — helpful for blood sugar, unhelpful if you already digest slowly.
The sugar alcohol in many 'keto' and sugar-free foods is generally recognised as safe. But newer studies tie high blood levels to cardiovascular events and show it makes platelets more prone to clotting.
A kilogram of muscle burns about 13 calories a day at rest — far less than the fitness-marketing figure implies. But resistance training does nudge resting metabolism up, by roughly 96 calories a day in a meta-analysis.
Additives such as carboxymethylcellulose stabilise processed food. A large cohort links some to slightly higher heart-disease risk, and a small trial shows one disturbs the gut — but proof of harm is not settled.
Started early and at high enough doses, zinc lozenges may cut a cold short by a day or two. But the evidence leans on a handful of small trials, formulation matters, and prevention claims are weaker.
Small trials suggest curcumin can modestly reduce arthritis pain, sometimes on par with painkillers — but the evidence is thin, and turmeric supplements are linked to a rising number of serious liver injuries.
Marketed as a natural weight-loss drug, berberine rests on small, mostly low-quality trials showing modest effects on blood sugar and cholesterol — with no weight-loss evidence to match the hype.
A large study of energy use across the lifespan found it holds steady from age 20 to 60, once body size is accounted for. The midlife metabolic slump is mostly a myth; the decline comes later.
A systematic review of the randomised trials found no compelling evidence for any remedy. Newer work suggests the hangover is driven by inflammation and metabolites, not just dehydration.
In 69 people across normal weight, overweight and type 2 diabetes, a stevia drink behaved like water — no shift in glucose, insulin, gut hormones, appetite or how much they ate next.
A meta-analysis of 30 randomised trials found fibre supplements work in IBS, with the benefit concentrated in psyllium. Wheat bran was the most-studied type and did not carry the effect.
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 tightly controlled crossover trial found late eating increased hunger, cut waking energy expenditure and shifted fat-tissue gene expression. The population data show a 17% higher odds of obesity.
The remedies that work are the ones matched to the cause — nose, mouth, tongue or palate. Here is what the trials support, and the sign that means see a doctor first.
Consumer clocks report an age, an age gap or a pace of ageing. Expert panels agree no single biomarker is sufficient — and clocks have failed to move when an intervention demonstrably worked.
Photobiomodulation raised skin temperature by 8 °C and left mitochondrial respiration exactly where it found it. Ketone esters across an eight-day stage race did nothing for performance, cognition or sleep.
The gap between those two numbers is the whole argument. An individual-patient meta-analysis of 20,827 people found real effects on both comparisons, and found that the choice of sham changed the answer.
A systematic review of 113 studies found real biology in NAD+ supplementation — and not one eligible human trial testing the IV or IM version clinics actually sell for anti-aging.
Across 107 cohort studies and 4.8 million people, the protective effect of moderate drinking disappeared once the comparison group stopped including people who had quit because they were ill.
In a free-living comparison, three devices counted steps within about 18% of a research monitor but one overestimated active-calorie burn by 139%. A lab study found step counts collapse when walking is slow.
Adding milk, yoghurt and cheese cut hip fractures 46% in Australian aged-care residents. In the general over-50 population, dietary calcium intake shows no association with fracture risk at all.
A meta-analysis of 23 blinded studies found no effect on any of 14 behavioural and cognitive measures. A separate trial fed children extreme doses and found nothing. The belief survives anyway.
It found rising microbiome diversity and falling inflammatory markers in the fermented-food arm — and no change in its own primary outcome in the high-fibre arm it was compared against.
Two real-world cohorts found lower blood levels per milligram from compounded formulations — and the longest longevity trial of rapamycin was run on the weaker one, which changes how to read it.
Two WHO bodies reported on the same day in July 2023 and reached findings that sound contradictory. Both were right, because they were answering different questions.
Pooling 13 randomised trials, people assigned to eat breakfast ended up 0.44 kg heavier and ate 260 more calories a day than people assigned to skip it. The trials were small, short and mostly low quality.
A NHANES analysis of 5,736 US adults over 60 found the benefit of higher protein directionally present and statistically imprecise. A meta-analysis of protein at breakfast found nothing at all.
In 390,124 US adults followed up to 27 years, daily multivitamin use showed no mortality benefit. Randomised trials within COSMOS found a real but modest effect on memory, and none on physical function.
IARC put bacon in the same category as tobacco in 2015, which says how sure scientists are, not how dangerous it is. The attributable-death figures are three orders of magnitude apart.
Pooled biomarker data from 30 studies in 13 countries link higher linoleic acid to lower cardiovascular risk. The randomised evidence, 19 trials and 6,461 people, is null and rated low quality.
A pooled analysis of 1.72 million people found no link between an egg a day and cardiovascular disease. A pooled analysis of six US cohorts found one. A randomised trial in 140 high-risk adults found neither.
A 2002 review went hunting for the origin of "8 x 8" and found nothing. Two decades later, isotope measurements in 5,604 people put daily water use anywhere from about 1 litre to about 6.
A home-monitoring trial found some patients don't sleep on their backs at home the way they did during their diagnostic sleep study, while others simply failed the vibrating device meant to keep them off their backs.
A scoping review mapped 204 consumer nutrigenetic panels at a mean price of $234. Across them, 3,309 different genes were linked to dietary recommendations.
A network meta-analysis put pooled accuracy for the fertile window at 0.88, best in the three days around ovulation. A wrist-temperature study hit ovulation within three days about 78% of the time.
A 327-person survey of economically distressed Eastern Kentucky counties found insomnia prevalence ranged from 44% to 83% depending on income alone.
An analysis of nearly 139,000 Americans finds sedative misuse for sleep clusters among both the socially advantaged and the chronically unwell — pointing to two distinct drivers behind the same behavior.
A February scientific statement declines to recommend the category for clinical decisions. Six weeks earlier, a journal retracted a validation study of a popular consumer model.
A meta-analysis of continuous glucose monitors in people without diabetes found a real effect on blood sugar — but only in those with prediabetes. In healthy users, the evidence for a metabolic benefit was not there.
A UK Biobank analysis finds high step counts do not offset short sleep. A US cohort finds one-minute bursts matter. And in older adults, most step-count differences vanish after adjusting for age and sex.
A review found wearables gave valid maximal-oxygen-uptake estimates in most studies of untrained and recreational exercisers. A separate meta-analysis pooled a 0.83 correlation, with high variability.
Against an ECG over 536 nights, Oura's heart-rate-variability error was under 8% and Whoop's acceptable, while Garmin and Polar lagged. The recovery scores layered on top stay proprietary and largely unvalidated.
A December survey found getting stronger is the leading 2026 health goal. The best meta-analysis of muscle-strengthening and mortality finds a benefit that plateaus at around 30 to 60 minutes a week.
A 21-trial meta-analysis found effects concentrated in older age groups and largely absent elsewhere. A separate safety review of the most-used strain found no excess adverse events — and a big reporting gap.
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.
Twenty untrained women cycled at four fixed workloads wearing four popular low-cost bands, checked against indirect calorimetry. Every device drifted further from the truth as effort rose.