Browse the evidence

Replacing 30 minutes of sedentary time with moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) significantly reduces cancer mortality risk by 31%, while replacing it with light-intensity physical activity (LIPA) reduces risk by 8%.

You don't need to run marathons to lower your cancer mortality risk. Simply swapping 30 minutes of sitting for 30 minutes of moderate exercise (like brisk walking) cuts your risk by 31%. Even swapping that time for light activity (like standing or slow walking) cuts risk by 8%. Prioritize breaking up sitting time with any form of movement.

Personalized nutrition recommendations must be derived from validated models and algorithms that demonstrate acceptable predictive performance on external populations.

If you use an app or service that gives you diet advice based on algorithms, check if they validate their models on diverse groups of people. This ensures the advice is likely to be accurate for you.

Interrupting prolonged sitting with frequent stand-up transitions significantly improves cardio-metabolic biomarkers (BMI, waist circumference, HDL, triglycerides, and glucose) compared to accumulating the same total sitting time in long, uninterrupted bouts.

If you must sit, do not sit for more than 30 minutes at a time. Stand up and move briefly (sit-stand transitions) as often as possible. This pattern of interrupting sitting is more beneficial for your waistline, cholesterol, and blood sugar than simply having the same total amount of sitting time but doing it in long, uninterrupted blocks.

Physical activity interventions, particularly those combining resistance and balance training, significantly improve physical performance outcomes (gait speed, strength, mobility) in pre-frail and frail older adults.

Engage in supervised physical activity, specifically focusing on resistance and balance exercises. This approach has been shown to significantly improve gait speed, strength, and mobility in pre-frail and frail older adults. Supervision is key to ensuring safety and adherence, which are critical for success.

Engaging in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) for at least 150 minutes per week is associated with a significantly higher probability of successful ageing in adults aged 60-83, regardless of whether the activity is accumulated in short bouts (<10 minutes) or long bouts (≥10 minutes).

To support successful ageing, aim for at least 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity each week. You do not need to exercise in continuous 10-minute blocks; short bursts of activity (even under 10 minutes) provide similar benefits. Focus on accumulating this total time through any means possible, such as brisk walking, gardening, or household chores.

Subsidizing healthy foods (specifically fruits and vegetables) by 10% increases their consumption by approximately 14%, and this price reduction is associated with a modest reduction in BMI.

To increase fruit and vegetable intake, policy-level subsidies that lower their price by 10% are effective. This economic lever directly drives a 14% increase in consumption. For individuals, this suggests that programs offering discounts on produce (like farmers market vouchers) are a viable strategy to improve diet quality.

Taxing sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) and fast food by 10% decreases their consumption by approximately 6-7%, though the effect on BMI is not statistically significant.

Implementing a 10% tax on SSBs and fast food reduces consumption by 6-7%. However, this alone does not significantly lower BMI. To maximize health impact, tax revenue should be used to subsidize healthy foods, leveraging the larger effect size of subsidies.

Women with type 2 diabetes are undertreated for cardiovascular risk factors (HbA1c, blood pressure, lipids) compared to men, contributing to worse outcomes.

Women with diabetes often receive less aggressive treatment for blood pressure and cholesterol than men. If you are a woman, advocate for yourself to ensure your risk factors are treated as aggressively as a man's, as undertreatment contributes to higher heart disease risk.

Implementing a 30% financial subsidy on fruits and vegetables through Medicare and Medicaid is highly cost-effective, preventing cardiovascular disease events and generating substantial quality-adjusted life years (QALYs).

For policymakers, subsidizing fruits and vegetables by 30% for Medicare and Medicaid recipients is a highly cost-effective strategy to improve public health. The model predicts significant reductions in cardiovascular disease and diabetes cases, leading to substantial long-term healthcare cost savings that offset the initial subsidy costs.

A 30% financial subsidy on a broader basket of healthful foods (including fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seafood, and plant oils) is more cost-effective than a fruit and vegetable-only subsidy, preventing more cardiovascular and diabetes cases.

For policymakers, expanding the subsidy to include whole grains, nuts, seafood, and plant oils alongside fruits and vegetables is even more cost-effective than subsidizing fruits and vegetables alone. This broader approach prevents more cases of cardiovascular disease and diabetes, resulting in greater long-term healthcare savings and lower cost-per-QALY ratios.

The efficacy of the vegetable consumption app is moderated by baseline vegetable intake; users with higher baseline consumption benefit significantly more from the intervention.

If you already eat a decent amount of vegetables, a tracking app will likely boost your intake even more than if you eat few vegetables. The app's gamification resonates more with those who already value vegetables.

SSB intake is inversely correlated with national Socio-demographic Development Index (SDI) by 2018, meaning higher national development is associated with lower national SSB intake, though within lower-SDI nations, higher individual education correlates with higher intake.

If you are in a developing nation, be aware that SSB marketing often targets the educated and urban demographics. High individual education does not protect against high SSB intake in these regions; in fact, it may correlate with higher intake.

SSB intake is significantly higher in urban vs. rural areas globally (57.3% higher), with the largest disparities in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, while being lower in urban areas of the Middle East/North Africa.

Urban dwellers, particularly in Africa and Asia, face higher exposure to SSBs. Focus on reducing availability and marketing in these high-density areas.

Warm-ups should be restricted to exercise-specific movements, and stretching should only be prioritized if the goal is to increase flexibility.

Skip generic warm-ups and static stretching unless you want more flexibility. Instead, do a few light sets of your specific exercises to warm up.

The cardiovascular benefits of low-carbohydrate diets diminish after 2 years of adherence, with no significant difference from control groups in weight or lipid profiles at that duration.

If you plan to follow a low-carbohydrate diet for more than two years, expect the weight loss and cardiovascular benefits to plateau and potentially disappear, largely due to the difficulty of maintaining strict adherence. Short-term adherence (under 11 months) yields the best results.

Ketogenic diets reduce body mass and fat mass primarily through appetite suppression and reduced energy intake, rather than through superior metabolic advantages over isoenergetic non-ketogenic diets.

If you use a ketogenic diet to lose weight, expect it to work because it helps you eat less, not because it burns fat faster. If you match the calories of a low-fat diet, you will lose the same amount of fat. Focus on the appetite-suppressing nature of the diet to maintain a caloric deficit.

Using Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE) for load prescription in resistance training yields small but probabilistically favorable strength gains compared to fixed percentage of 1RM loading, while producing equivalent hypertrophy.

If you are struggling to progress with fixed percentages, try switching to RPE. Instead of lifting 80kg for 8 reps, pick a weight that feels like a 7-8 on a 1-10 scale (where 10 is failure). If you hit the reps easily, increase the weight next session; if you miss reps, decrease it. This approach yielded slightly better strength gains in trained men over 8 weeks compared to fixed percentages, with no difference in muscle growth.

Self-tracking of physical activity using wearable devices increases daily step count in people with type 2 diabetes, but does not significantly improve glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) levels unless the individual achieves a specific threshold of activity increase (≥1000 steps/day).

Use a wearable tracker to monitor your daily steps, but don't expect your blood sugar to improve automatically. Focus on increasing your daily steps by at least 1,000 over your current baseline. If you achieve this increase, you are likely to see a meaningful improvement in your HbA1c. If you don't reach this threshold, your HbA1c may not change significantly, even if you are more active than before.

Implementing a 10% tax on sugar-sweetened beverages and subsidies on healthy foods (fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts/seeds) reduces cardiometabolic disease mortality by altering dietary intake patterns.

For policymakers, this evidence supports enacting a 10% tax on sugar-sweetened beverages and processed/red meats, while using the revenue to subsidize fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and nuts. This dual approach shifts consumer behavior toward healthier options, resulting in a measurable reduction in heart disease and diabetes deaths, particularly benefiting lower-income populations who are more price-sensitive.

Fiscal interventions on diet reduce health disparities between socioeconomic groups, with greater mortality reductions observed in lower education groups compared to college graduates.

Policymakers should design fiscal policies to explicitly account for higher price sensitivity in low-income populations. By combining taxes on sugary drinks and red meats with subsidies for fruits and vegetables, the policy can close the health gap between socioeconomic groups, as lower-income individuals are more likely to change their behavior in response to price changes.

Offering explicit swaps to lower-saturated-fat alternatives reduces the percentage energy from saturated fat in the shopping basket, but is less effective than altering the default product order.

If you are designing an online grocery platform, offer explicit swaps to lower-SFA alternatives when a user selects a high-SFA product. Ensure the swap matches the brand, weight, and price as closely as possible to increase acceptance. Note that this method is less effective than simply sorting products by health metrics.

Combining default order alteration and explicit swaps does not significantly increase the reduction in saturated fat compared to altering the default order alone.

If you are designing an online grocery platform, you do not need to implement both default ordering and explicit swaps. Implementing default ordering (sorting by SFA) is sufficient to achieve the maximum reduction in saturated fat. Adding explicit swaps provides no significant additional benefit and may increase complexity.

A standard 12-week low-intensity behavioral weight management program (WMP1) is the next most cost-effective intervention after RYGB surgery for adults with severe obesity.

For patients with severe obesity who cannot or choose not to have surgery, a standard 12-week behavioral weight management program is the most cost-effective non-surgical option. This program involves weekly group sessions focusing on diet and physical activity advice. It offers good value for money and can be delivered at scale.

Resistance training to failure and non-failure have equivalent effects on sleep quality (subjective and actigraphic) and heart rate variability (HRV) during sleep.

You don't need to worry that training to failure will ruin your sleep. Both failure and non-failure training resulted in similar sleep quality and heart rate variability. Focus on managing your strength recovery instead.