Browse the evidence

Pharmacological interventions including zolpidem, melatonin, and dexmedetomidine can improve postoperative sleep quality and reduce complications like delirium.

Ask your care team about sleep-promoting medications like dexmedetomidine or melatonin, especially if you are elderly or in the ICU, as they may help prevent confusion and improve recovery.

Nonpharmacological interventions such as regional anesthesia, noise reduction, and use of earplugs/eye masks improve postoperative sleep quality.

Request earplugs and eye masks from nursing staff to block out hospital noise and light, which are major disruptors of sleep architecture.

Objective measures of physical capability (grip strength, walking speed, chair rise, standing balance) are robust indicators of healthy biological ageing and predict lower mortality and morbidity rates.

Focus on maintaining objective physical capabilities like grip strength, walking speed, and balance. These are not just measures of current fitness but strong predictors of your long-term survival and risk of chronic disease. Regularly assessing these metrics provides a clearer picture of your health trajectory than self-reported feelings of ability.

Sarcopenic obesity (SO) is a significant predictor of increased all-cause mortality in adults, with a pooled hazard ratio of 1.21 compared to non-sarcopenic non-obese individuals.

Maintaining muscle mass while managing body fat is critical for longevity. If you are older or have a sedentary lifestyle, prioritize resistance training and adequate protein intake to prevent sarcopenic obesity, as this condition significantly increases your risk of death regardless of your weight.

Sarcopenic obesity defined by visceral fat area confers the highest risk of all-cause mortality (HR = 2.54) compared to other obesity definitions like BMI or waist circumference.

If you have sarcopenic obesity, knowing your visceral fat level is crucial. Visceral fat combined with low muscle mass nearly doubles your mortality risk compared to other forms of SO. Prioritize exercises and diets that reduce visceral fat and build muscle, rather than just focusing on total weight loss.

Sarcopenic obesity poses a significantly higher mortality risk for hospitalized patients (HR = 1.65) compared to community-dwelling adults (HR = 1.14).

If you are hospitalized, ask about sarcopenic obesity. The risk of death is significantly higher for hospitalized patients with SO than for those in the community. Early intervention to preserve muscle and manage fat is crucial for your prognosis.

Higher consumption of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) increases the risk of developing multimorbidity, defined as the co-occurrence of at least two chronic diseases among cancer, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes.

To lower your risk of developing multiple chronic conditions (cancer, heart disease, diabetes) simultaneously, reduce your intake of ultra-processed foods. This includes items like soft drinks, packaged snacks, processed meats, and ready-to-eat meals. Aim to replace these with less processed options, as even a moderate reduction can significantly improve long-term health outcomes.

Among ultra-processed food subgroups, animal-based products and artificially/sugar-sweetened beverages are specifically associated with increased multimorbidity risk, while ultra-processed breads and cereals may be inversely associated.

Not all ultra-processed foods are equally risky. Prioritize reducing sugar-sweetened beverages and animal-based processed products (like processed meats), as these are most strongly linked to chronic disease multimorbidity. Ultra-processed breads and cereals may not carry the same risk, so focus your efforts on the highest-impact items.

The ALDH2 genetic variant (rs671) associated with BMI has an antagonistic effect with alcohol consumption, showing a BMI-increasing effect primarily among non-drinkers.

For East Asians with the ALDH2 variant, the genetic link to BMI appears to be stronger in those who do not drink alcohol. This suggests that alcohol consumption might interact with this specific genetic risk factor, potentially masking or altering its effect on body weight.

Postoperative oral dietary supplementation in patients undergoing elective gastrointestinal surgery significantly reduces postoperative complications and preserves nutritional status during the inpatient phase.

If you are having major stomach or bowel surgery, ask your medical team about providing you with oral nutritional supplements (like Fortisip) while you are in the hospital. Drinking these supplements between meals, as much as you can tolerate, can help you keep your strength, lose less weight, and significantly lower your risk of getting infections or other complications after the operation. However, continuing these supplements at home after you are discharged does not appear to provide additional benefits for your weight or well-being.

The weight loss and metabolic benefits of Resistant Starch are mediated by an increase in Bifidobacterium adolescentis, which alters bile acid profiles (increasing GDCA/TDCA) and reduces lipid absorption.

The benefits of resistant starch depend on your gut bacteria. If you lack Bifidobacterium adolescentis, you may not see the same weight loss or metabolic improvements. Consistency is key to fostering these specific bacteria.

Early-life undernutrition (intrauterine or infant stunting) permanently alters metabolic programming, significantly increasing the risk of obesity, insulin resistance, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease in adulthood, particularly when followed by a nutrition transition involving energy-dense diets.

For individuals in resource-limited settings or those with a history of childhood stunting, standard weight-loss advice may be insufficient. Prevention of early-life malnutrition is critical. For adults with this history, interventions must address both dietary quality (micronutrients) and energy balance, recognizing a higher biological susceptibility to metabolic disease.

Among men maintaining optimal levels of four healthy lifestyle behaviors (BMI <25, moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, smoking abstinence, and high-quality diet), moderate alcohol consumption (5.0 to 29.9 g/d) is associated with a significantly lower risk of myocardial infarction compared to abstinence.

If you are a man who already maintains a healthy weight, exercises regularly, doesn't smoke, and eats a high-quality diet, drinking moderately (up to about 2 drinks per day) is associated with a lower risk of heart attack compared to not drinking at all. This suggests moderate drinking can complement a healthy lifestyle rather than contradict it, though absolute risk reduction is small in this low-risk group.

Prolonged (12 months) and intense endurance exercise training reduces myocardial ischemia at a given workload in patients with coronary artery disease by increasing the double-product threshold for ST-segment depression.

For CAD patients, standard cardiac rehab often involves mild, intermittent exercise. To see improvements in how much stress your heart can handle before showing signs of ischemia (ST depression), you need a program that is both long (at least 12 months) and progressively intense (reaching 70-90% of your max capacity). This specific type of training raises the threshold for ischemia, meaning your heart can work harder before showing distress signals.

Lean NAFLD is a distinct phenotype characterized by visceral adiposity and metabolic abnormalities despite normal BMI, and it carries similar cardio-metabolic risks to obese NAFLD.

Being lean does not protect you from fatty liver. If you have visceral fat (belly fat) despite a normal weight, you are at risk for NAFLD and its complications. Focus on reducing visceral fat through exercise and diet, and get screened if you have risk factors like family history or metabolic issues.

Consumer-grade wearable sleep-tracking devices (e.g., smartwatches, rings) provide sleep data that is comparable to or superior to traditional actigraphy when validated against polysomnography (PSG), primarily due to the integration of photoplethysmography (PPG) and machine learning algorithms.

For sleep research, modern consumer wearables (smartwatches/rings) are now more accurate than traditional actigraphy for estimating sleep stages, provided you account for their limitations in specific populations (e.g., obesity, darker skin). Do not assume 'research-grade' labels guarantee accuracy without validation; validate the specific device against PSG for your target population.

Neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) applied to critically ill patients in the ICU, added to usual care, is more effective than usual care alone for preventing skeletal-muscle weakness.

For ICU patients who cannot actively exercise due to sedation or critical illness, applying Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation (NMES) to major muscle groups (like quadriceps) daily, starting from the first few days of admission, is a proven strategy to prevent muscle weakness. Ensure the device intensity is high enough to cause a visible muscle contraction. This should be done alongside standard medical care.

High-dose long-chain corn bran arabinoxylan supplementation increases fecal propionate concentrations in adults with overweight and obesity, driven by specific shifts in gut microbiota composition (Bifidobacterium longum, Bacteroides obeum, and Prevotella succinatutens) rather than baseline microbiota.

If you have overweight or obesity, adding high-dose corn bran arabinoxylan (25-35g/day) can boost beneficial gut bacteria that produce propionate, a metabolite linked to metabolic health. However, results vary by person; your specific gut bacteria determine if and how much propionate you produce. Consistency is key, as effects were seen within one week.

Adherence to the Mediterranean Diet (MD) significantly reduces the overall risk of cancer incidence and mortality by approximately 10% through the modulation of chronic low-grade systemic inflammation (inflammaging).

Adopt a Mediterranean-style eating pattern as your default lifestyle. Prioritize daily consumption of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, and olive oil. Include fish regularly and limit red meat and saturated fats. If you drink alcohol, do so moderately with meals. This approach has been shown to reduce overall cancer risk by 10% by lowering chronic inflammation, whereas taking antioxidant supplements is not recommended and may be harmful.

Adherence to a traditional Mediterranean dietary pattern is associated with a significant reduction in overall mortality among elderly populations.

For elderly individuals, prioritizing a diet rich in olive oil, vegetables, fruits, legumes, and whole grains, while limiting meat and refined sugars, is strongly associated with living longer. This pattern has shown benefits across diverse cultures, suggesting that adopting these core components can improve longevity regardless of specific ethnic background.

A two-year dietary intervention significantly slows epigenetic aging as measured by the DNAmGrimAge biomarker in healthy postmenopausal women.

Adopting a diet rich in plant foods, whole grains, and vegetables while reducing meat, cakes, and saturated fats can significantly slow biological aging in postmenopausal women. You do not need extreme restrictions; consistent, moderate improvements in dietary quality over two years are sufficient to see measurable epigenetic benefits.

The kidney benefits of semaglutide are largely mediated by weight loss, although direct GLP-1 receptor effects on the kidney may also contribute.

While semaglutide has direct kidney-protective properties, most of its benefit comes from the weight loss it induces. Therefore, maintaining weight loss is crucial for sustaining kidney protection.

Vegetarian and vegan diets are associated with a significantly lower risk of ischaemic heart disease compared to meat-eating diets, primarily mediated by lower body mass index, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels.

Adopting a vegetarian or vegan diet is associated with a lower risk of heart disease compared to eating meat. This benefit appears to be linked to lower body weight, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels often found in vegetarians. You do not need to eliminate all animal products to see benefits; fish eaters also showed reduced risk.

Initiating moderate red wine consumption (150 mL/day) with dinner for two years significantly improves lipid profiles (increased HDL-C, decreased total cholesterol-HDL ratio) and reduces metabolic syndrome components in adults with well-controlled type 2 diabetes compared to mineral water.

If you have well-controlled type 2 diabetes and do not currently drink, you might consider adding one small glass (5 oz) of red wine with your dinner daily, provided you follow a healthy Mediterranean-style diet. This specific pattern has been shown in a 2-year study to improve cholesterol levels and reduce metabolic risk factors without adverse effects. However, this does not apply if you have a history of alcohol abuse, uncontrolled blood sugar, or other specific contraindications like heart disease.