Browse the evidence

Dietary interventions (caloric restriction, high-fat, high protein-to-carbohydrate ratios, and specific micronutrients) administered during critical developmental windows (puberty, pregnancy, or lifetime) can induce transgenerational epigenetic modifications that protect offspring against environmental toxins.

To potentially protect future generations from environmental toxins, parents should consider adopting protective dietary patterns—such as high protein-to-carbohydrate ratios, caloric restriction, or specific micronutrient supplementation—during critical life stages like puberty, pregnancy, or throughout their lifetime. These dietary choices can induce epigenetic changes that may persist for multiple generations.

Age is the most significant factor for multimorbidity, with individuals over 60 years old having a 5.89 times higher likelihood of reporting two or more chronic diseases compared to those under 49.

As you age, the risk of developing multiple chronic conditions increases significantly. However, managing modifiable risk factors like blood pressure and weight can help mitigate this risk. Regular health screenings and adherence to medication for conditions like hypertension and diabetes are crucial for older adults to prevent multimorbidity.

A multidisciplinary care model involving plastic surgeons, bariatric specialists, dieticians, and mental health providers is essential for optimizing safety and outcomes in body contouring surgery for massive weight loss patients.

If you are considering body contouring after significant weight loss, ensure your care team includes not just a surgeon, but also a dietitian to check for nutrient deficiencies, a mental health professional to manage expectations, and a primary care doctor to manage conditions like diabetes. This coordinated approach minimizes complications and improves long-term satisfaction.

Combining obesity management medications (OMM) with metabolic bariatric surgery (MBS) or endoscopic procedures is an inevitable and necessary component of future personalized obesity care, though optimal protocols are currently undefined.

Future obesity care will likely involve combining medications (like GLP-1s) with surgery or endoscopy. This combination is becoming standard to manage weight regain or suboptimal responses, though specific dosing and timing protocols are still being researched.

Moderate-intensity and high-intensity interval exercise training provide equal cardioprotection against diabetic cardiomyopathy in rats by preventing left ventricular fibrosis and collagen cross-linking.

If you have diabetes or are at risk, both moderate-intensity and high-intensity interval exercise can protect your heart. You do not need to choose high intensity if moderate is more sustainable; both approaches prevent heart damage and fibrosis in this model.

Pyridoxamine supplementation alleviates cardiac fibrosis and oxidative stress in prediabetic rats, preventing left ventricular collagen deposition.

Pyridoxamine may help reduce heart scarring and oxidative stress in prediabetes, but this is based on animal studies. It should not replace lifestyle changes like exercise and diet.

Lower Body Mass Index (BMI) is inversely associated with arterial stiffness in Japanese patients with Type 2 Diabetes, contradicting findings in non-Asian populations.

If you are Asian and have Type 2 Diabetes, do not rely solely on BMI to assess your cardiovascular risk. Even if your BMI is 'normal', you may have high visceral fat which increases arterial stiffness. Focus on body composition and metabolic health markers rather than just weight.

Swearing improves physical performance in short, intense tasks by increasing pain tolerance, state disinhibition, and physiological arousal.

If you are about to perform a short, intense physical task like a heavy lift or a sprint, using a swear word (either aloud or internally) may help you push harder. The effect comes from increased pain tolerance and mental focus. However, be mindful of social contexts where swearing might be inappropriate.

Mechanical load is sensed by specific proteins including filamin-C, BAG3, titin, and costameres (integrins, FAK), which transduce force into hypertrophic signaling via mTORC1 and Hippo pathway activation.

This node describes the internal biological machinery of muscle growth. For the average exerciser, understanding that specific proteins sense force reinforces the importance of progressive overload and mechanical tension. While you cannot directly control these proteins, ensuring your training provides adequate mechanical stress (via load and volume) is the way to engage these sensors.

Adolescent consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) is associated with an increased risk of early-onset colorectal cancer (EO-CRC) later in life.

For parents and adolescents, reducing SSB consumption during teenage years may help lower the risk of early-onset colorectal cancer in adulthood. Encouraging healthier beverage alternatives like water, milk, or coffee can be beneficial.

Training to volitional failure, contraction velocity, set configuration, inter-set rest, periodization, time of day, and exercise order do not significantly influence skeletal muscle hypertrophy.

You do not need to obsess over training to failure, specific tempos, exercise order, or rest periods to build muscle. These variables have little to no impact on hypertrophy compared to the main drivers: load, frequency, and volume. Choose what is sustainable for you.

Excessive dietary intake of linoleic acid (LA) leads to the formation of oxidized linoleic acid metabolites (OXLAMs) and alters cardiolipin composition, causing mitochondrial dysfunction and contributing to chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, and Alzheimer's.

Reduce intake of seed oils (soybean, corn, canola, sunflower) to lower linoleic acid consumption. This may help reduce the production of harmful metabolites linked to chronic disease, though the process is slow due to LA's long half-life.

Obesity prevalence has increased significantly in the US since 1980 despite a plateau or decline in national energy intake and stable or increasing physical activity levels since 2000.

Focus on the quality and processing of your food rather than just counting calories. Prioritize minimally processed foods with intact cellular structures (fiber, phytonutrients) and avoid highly processed 'acellular' nutrients. This supports a healthy gut microbiome and metabolic function, which may help regulate body weight more effectively than caloric restriction alone.

Gene-based and microbiome-based personalized nutrition recommendations currently lack sufficient scientific evidence to improve weight loss outcomes compared to standard dietary counseling.

Do not pay for commercial genetic or microbiome tests to guide your weight loss diet. Current evidence shows they do not improve weight loss outcomes compared to standard dietary advice. Focus on creating a caloric deficit instead.

Oral administration of 30 mg deuterated creatine (D3-creatine) allows for the estimation of total body skeletal muscle mass via urine D3-creatinine enrichment, providing estimates that correlate strongly with MRI but exhibit high intraindividual variability compared to MRI or DXA.

This study validates a method to measure muscle mass using a specific labeled creatine tracer and urine analysis. It is not a supplement regimen for building muscle, but a diagnostic tool. For now, it remains a research method due to cost and complexity, though it aims to eventually replace expensive imaging like MRI for tracking muscle wasting in clinical settings.

Evidence that behavioral weight management programs reduce the incidence of cardiovascular disease or type 2 diabetes is currently sparse and uncertain.

While BWMPs improve risk factors, do not expect them to definitively prevent heart disease or diabetes based on current evidence. The data is too sparse to draw firm conclusions about disease incidence reduction.

HMB supplementation provides minor, inconsistent support for increasing or retaining lean soft-tissue mass (LSTM) in older or clinical populations, but has no evidence of improving physical function.

If you are older or clinically frail, HMB might offer a small benefit for retaining lean mass, especially if you are not exercising. However, do not expect it to improve your strength or physical function. It is not a substitute for exercise or adequate protein intake. If you are healthy and exercising, HMB likely adds no value.

Transdermal TRT has a minimal or inconsistent effect on reducing fat mass (FM) in men with spinal cord injury, unlike its consistent effect on increasing lean body mass.

While testosterone therapy will likely help you build muscle, don't expect it to automatically melt away fat if you have a spinal cord injury. Your reduced mobility and lower energy expenditure make fat loss harder to achieve through hormones alone. You may need to focus more on dietary adjustments and any possible physical activity to see changes in fat mass, even as your muscle mass improves.

Nutritional interventions, including supplements, do not provide additional benefit to mobility outcomes when combined with physical activity in older adults.

Do not rely on nutritional supplements to improve mobility. Focus on physical activity instead, as supplements have shown no additional benefit when combined with exercise for this population.

Consuming milk or fortified milk does not improve muscle mass, strength, or physical performance in older adults compared to control groups, regardless of whether it is combined with resistance exercise.

If you are an older adult trying to maintain or build muscle, drinking milk or fortified milk alone, or even with exercise, has not been shown to provide additional benefits over your normal diet or exercise routine. Focus on ensuring you meet your overall daily protein needs (potentially >1.0 g/kg body weight) through a balanced diet, as milk alone is not a magic bullet for sarcopenia.

Auricular acupoint stimulation does not significantly reduce hip circumference or waist-to-hip ratio in overweight and obese adults.

Do not expect auricular stimulation to change your hip size or waist-to-hip ratio. It primarily affects overall weight, body fat percentage, and waist circumference.

Dietary restriction (DR), including caloric restriction (CR) and intermittent fasting (IF), delays aging and extends healthspan by regulating nutrient-sensing pathways and gut microbiota.

To leverage dietary restriction for anti-aging, you don't necessarily need to cut calories drastically all day. Consider Time-Restricted Eating (eating within a 4-12 hour window) or Intermittent Fasting patterns like the 5:2 diet. These methods regulate nutrient-sensing pathways and gut microbiota similarly to strict calorie counting but are easier to sustain long-term. Focus on consistency and moderate restriction (10-30% if doing CR) to avoid negative side effects like muscle loss.

Combining HMB (3g/day) with Resistance Training does not provide a statistically significant additional benefit to muscle mass or strength compared to Resistance Training alone in elderly sarcopenic patients after hip surgery.

You do not need to take HMB if you are doing Resistance Training after hip surgery. RT alone is enough to build muscle and strength; adding HMB does not provide extra benefit for these metrics.

Saturated fatty acids (SFAs) promote atherosclerosis by activating TLR4 and NFκB pathways in macrophages, leading to increased pro-inflammatory cytokine production (IL-6, TNF-α) and NLRP3 inflammasome activation.

Limit intake of saturated fats (found in animal products, some tropical oils) as they may directly trigger inflammatory pathways in blood vessel walls, contributing to plaque formation.