For how we live.
Consumer wellness claims, tested against the evidence.
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.
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 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 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.