Browse the evidence

Thiamine (Vitamin B1) is an essential micronutrient required for energy metabolism, and its deficiency leads to severe clinical disorders like beriberi and Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, particularly in populations relying on polished rice or facing food insecurity.

Ensure your diet includes thiamine-rich foods like whole grains, meats, legumes, and nuts. In regions where polished rice is a staple, look for fortified rice or consider supplementation, especially if pregnant, lactating, or critically ill, as deficiency can be fatal.

Engaging in more than 90 minutes per week of leisure-time physical activity (LTPA) before pregnancy is associated with a 46% reduction in the odds of developing GDM.

Aim for at least 90 minutes of leisure activity per week before you conceive. This doesn't mean intense gym sessions; it can be walking, gardening, or dancing. This specific volume cuts your risk of gestational diabetes by nearly half.

Sleep restriction (4-5 hours/night) increases 24-hour energy expenditure by ~5-7% in humans, but this metabolic cost is offset by a disproportionate increase in caloric intake (particularly from post-dinner snacks), resulting in a positive energy balance and weight gain.

If you are sleeping less than 7 hours, do not assume you are burning more calories and can eat more. Your body burns slightly more energy when awake, but your hormones (ghrelin/leptin) drive you to eat significantly more, especially late at night. This extra food intake outweighs the extra energy burned, leading to weight gain. Prioritize 7-9 hours of sleep to protect your metabolic health.

Circadian misalignment (e.g., shift work, eating at night) decreases 24-hour energy expenditure and impairs glucose metabolism, independent of caloric intake and physical activity levels.

If you work night shifts or eat late at night, your body's metabolism is less efficient. Your energy expenditure drops, and your body handles sugar worse. To mitigate this, try to eat your main meals during your biological day (even if it's during your 'day' while working nights) and prioritize getting high-quality sleep during the day. Avoid eating large meals during your biological night.

Ultra-marathon running causes a significant energy deficit leading to reductions in both body fat and skeletal muscle mass.

If you are preparing for an ultra-marathon, expect to lose some muscle and fat due to the massive energy expenditure. To minimize muscle loss, prioritize high carbohydrate intake during the race and ensure adequate protein intake in the days following the event to support recovery.

For unsupervised exercise interventions in cancer patients, higher weekly energy expenditure is associated with larger improvements in physical function, although this dose-response relationship was not statistically significant in sensitivity analyses restricted to breast cancer patients.

If you cannot access supervised exercise, aim for a higher total energy expenditure (combining intensity and frequency) to improve physical function. While the specific type of exercise (aerobic vs. resistance) may not matter as much, ensuring you are expending enough energy weekly is key for unsupervised protocols.

Intermittent energy restriction results in greater weight loss than continuous energy restriction, though statistical equivalence was not met in this trial.

While both diets reduce weight, the intermittent diet (2 days of very low calories) led to slightly more weight loss on average (-6.8 kg vs -5.0 kg) in this study. However, the difference was not statistically proven to be superior, so individual results may vary.

Activation of brown adipose tissue (BAT) thermogenesis and white adipose tissue (WAT) browning through UCP1 activation improves insulin sensitivity and energy expenditure.

Exposing yourself to moderate cold (around 14-15°C) for short periods (e.g., 10 days) can activate brown fat and improve insulin sensitivity. This strategy, known as cold acclimation, may be particularly beneficial for individuals with diabetes or low brown fat levels.

Bariatric surgery is an effective treatment for severe obesity in adolescents and adults with NAFLD, significantly improving liver histology, fibrosis, and metabolic parameters, but carries risks of complications.

For severe obesity that hasn't responded to lifestyle changes, bariatric surgery is a recommended option that can significantly improve liver health and fibrosis. Discuss the risks and benefits with a specialist, especially if you have advanced liver disease.

Dietary interventions can rapidly alter gut microbiota composition and function, but long-term changes require sustained dietary habits, and individual response varies significantly based on baseline microbial richness.

Changing your diet quickly changes your gut bacteria, but keeping those changes requires long-term habits. If you have a diverse microbiome already, drastic dietary changes might have less impact on your bacteria than if you have low diversity. Focus on consistent, healthy eating patterns.

Endurance and resistance exercise training lowers plasma BCAA levels and enhances BCAA oxidation, serving as a natural strategy to mitigate BCAA-related insulin resistance.

Engage in regular endurance and resistance training. This naturally lowers circulating BCAA levels and improves their oxidation, helping to counteract insulin resistance. You don't need extreme protocols; consistent training is effective.

Semaglutide increases the risk of biliary disease (cholelithiasis), which is a class effect of GLP-1 receptor agonists, likely due to rapid weight loss.

Be aware that semaglutide increases the risk of gallbladder problems like gallstones. This risk is associated with the rapid weight loss the drug causes. Report any severe abdominal pain, especially in the upper right side, to your doctor immediately.

Loss of the zinc transporter ZIP13 promotes the biogenesis of beige adipocytes and increases energy expenditure, conferring resistance to high-fat diet-induced obesity and improving glucose tolerance.

While you cannot directly 'take' a ZIP13 inhibitor, this research highlights that increasing beige fat activity (through cold exposure or exercise) may improve metabolic health. The paper suggests that targeting the molecular identity of fat cells is a promising future treatment for obesity.

Caloric restriction (CR) mitigates obesity-induced aging mechanisms by restoring mitochondrial function, promoting stem cell self-renewal, and modulating epigenetic aging clocks.

If you are obese, even modest caloric restriction can help reverse some of the biological aging markers associated with excess weight, such as epigenetic drift and mitochondrial dysfunction.

Exercise-induced PGC1α expression activates branched-chain amino acid (BCAA) metabolism, using BCAAs as an energy source in the TCA cycle, and increases the production of the myokine BAIBA.

During prolonged exercise, your muscles use BCAAs for energy. This process triggers the release of BAIBA, a molecule that helps improve metabolism in fat tissue and other organs. This highlights the systemic benefits of exercise beyond just muscle contraction.

Obesity moderates the dose-response relationship for cognitive benefits, with overweight/obese older adults reaching maximal cognitive benefits at lower exercise doses (~600 METs-min/week) than those with healthy BMI.

If you are overweight or obese, you may achieve maximum cognitive benefits with around 600 METs-min of exercise per week. Pushing beyond this may not yield additional cognitive gains and could be unrealistic. Start with moderate doses.

Endurance training increases maximal fat oxidation (MFO) rates and shifts the intensity at which MFO occurs to higher workloads by upregulating cellular transport proteins (CD36, CPT-1) and mitochondrial enzymes (HAD, Citrate Synthase).

If you want your body to become more efficient at burning fat, commit to long-duration endurance training (over 2 hours per session) consistently over months or years. This builds the cellular machinery (enzymes and transporters) needed to oxidize fat at higher intensities, allowing you to burn more fat per minute during exercise.

Brown adipose tissue (BAT) contributes to diet-induced thermogenesis (DIT) in humans, with individuals having higher BAT activity showing significantly higher postprandial energy expenditure compared to those with low BAT activity.

Your body burns more calories after eating if you have active brown fat. This is a natural physiological variation. You cannot directly 'take' this, but maintaining a healthy weight and potentially exposing yourself to mild cold may help maintain BAT activity.

Higher levels of physical activity, particularly vigorous intensity, are inversely associated with the risk of developing breast cancer in both premenopausal and postmenopausal women.

Engage in regular physical activity, aiming for vigorous intensity when possible, as it significantly lowers breast cancer risk for women of all ages. If vigorous exercise is not feasible, total or recreational activity still provides protective benefits, though less pronounced than vigorous activity.

Achieving high energy and protein requirements on a vegan diet is challenging due to the high fiber content and low energy density of plant foods, which promote early satiety.

If you struggle to eat enough calories as a vegan, focus on energy-dense foods like nuts, seeds, and oils, and eat more frequently. Choose lower-fiber carbohydrate sources (like white rice or pasta) during high-training phases to avoid feeling too full to eat enough.

Time-restricted feeding (TRF) improves cardiometabolic health in individuals with obesity or type 2 diabetes, though some benefits may be attributable to reduced calorie intake rather than timing alone.

Try restricting your eating window to 8-10 hours per day. This may improve your metabolic health and help with weight management. However, be aware that some of the benefits might simply come from eating fewer calories because you have less time to eat. If you struggle with the timing, focus on reducing overall calorie intake, as that is likely the primary driver of weight loss.

Weight loss interventions, including hypocaloric diets and exercise, modulate the metabolomic profile of obese individuals, potentially reversing or altering obesity-related metabolic signatures.

Weight loss through diet or exercise changes your metabolic profile. This means that losing weight can help reverse some of the metabolic abnormalities associated with obesity, such as insulin resistance and altered amino acid levels.

Activation of PPARα by fibrate agonists (e.g., fenofibrate, ciprofibrate) reduces plasma triglycerides and LDL-C while increasing HDL-C, primarily by accelerating fatty acid oxidation and ketone body production in the liver.

Fibrates are a class of drugs that activate PPARα to lower bad cholesterol (LDL) and triglycerides while raising good cholesterol (HDL). They work by telling your liver to burn more fat for energy. While diet plays a role in activating these receptors, fibrates provide a potent, targeted activation for those with high lipid levels.

Low energy availability reduces resting metabolic rate (RMR) by approximately 8% as an energy-conserving mechanism, independent of changes in body composition.

If you are training heavily and eating very little, your body may slow down its baseline calorie burn to survive. This is a normal adaptation, not a broken metabolism. Restoring adequate energy intake will help normalize your metabolic rate.