Browse the evidence

Shift work disrupts circadian rhythms and metabolic health, increasing risks for hypertension, dyslipidemia, and abdominal obesity.

If you work shifts, be aware that your body's clock is disrupted, which can raise blood pressure and worsen cholesterol. Prioritize sleep during the day and monitor your metabolic health regularly.

For individuals with Type 1 Diabetes, stopping work and staying at home during lockdown significantly improves short-term glycemic control (lower average glucose, increased time in range) compared to continuing work, likely due to reduced workplace stress and more regular routines.

If you have Type 1 Diabetes and your routine is disrupted (e.g., working from home, lockdown), focus on stabilizing your daily routine rather than stressing about exercise. The study suggests that reducing workplace stress and maintaining regular meal/insulin timing can significantly improve glucose control, even if you are less active. Monitor your time in range, as it increased significantly in those who slowed down.

Resistance exercise training increases glucose transport into skeletal muscle, but unlike aerobic training, it does not consistently increase GLUT4 protein levels.

Resistance training improves how your muscles handle glucose, even if it doesn't always increase the main glucose transporter (GLUT4) like aerobic exercise does. This suggests resistance training works through other mechanisms to help manage blood sugar.

Participation in community-based social dancing (ballroom or folk) for 12 months reduces fall incidence and improves cognitive function in older adults, with efficacy potentially matching or exceeding standard balance training.

Older adults can reduce their risk of falling by joining community social dance classes (like ballroom or folk) twice a week. This activity improves balance, cognitive function, and social engagement, offering a sustainable alternative to repetitive exercise routines.

NRPT supplementation (specifically the double dose) improves physical mobility markers, including chair stand tests and 6-minute walk distance, in older adults.

If you are looking to support physical mobility, the double dose of NRPT (500mg NR + 100mg PT) showed improvements in walking distance and chair stand tests in this study. However, this effect was not seen at the standard dose, so the higher dose may be necessary for this specific benefit.

Dietary methionine restriction (MR) significantly increases fat oxidation and reduces intrahepatic lipid content in obese adults with metabolic syndrome, independent of weight loss.

If you have metabolic syndrome, restricting methionine (found in meat, dairy, and grains) to very low levels (approx 2mg/kg body weight) for 16 weeks can help your body burn more fat and reduce liver fat, even if you lose the same amount of weight as someone eating a normal restricted diet. However, achieving this requires a highly restrictive diet that eliminates many common foods, which may be difficult to sustain long-term.

A whole-grain cereal-rich diet tends to decrease total and LDL-cholesterol compared to a refined-grain diet in healthy subjects, although the effect was not statistically significant at the conventional 0.05 level.

While the cholesterol-lowering effect of whole grains may not be statistically significant in short-term studies of healthy people, the trend toward lower LDL (9% decrease) supports the general recommendation to eat whole grains for heart health. Focus on the consistent elevation of beneficial compounds like betaine.

Lifestyle management, specifically focusing on healthy lifestyle, emotional wellbeing, and quality of life, is a foundational recommendation for the assessment and management of PCOS, with explicit attention to avoiding weight stigma.

For someone with PCOS, prioritize sustainable lifestyle habits that support your mental and physical health rather than chasing rapid weight loss. Work with your healthcare provider to create a plan that respects your body image and addresses emotional wellbeing, as this is a critical part of managing the syndrome's diverse burdens.

Higher time discounting (a preference for immediate rewards over delayed benefits) is positively associated with unhealthy diets, overweight, and obesity.

If you find yourself choosing unhealthy food despite wanting to be healthy, it may not just be a lack of willpower. Your brain might be 'discounting' the future health benefits too heavily in favor of immediate taste. To counter this, make healthy choices easier and more immediate (e.g., pre-prepared meals) and make unhealthy choices harder to access.

Lower time discounting is associated with greater success in weight loss and weight maintenance interventions.

If you struggle to stick to a diet, your brain might be prioritizing immediate food rewards over future health goals. Standard advice might not work for you. Try breaking goals into smaller, immediate rewards and focus on making healthy choices the path of least resistance.

Time discounting measures using food rewards show stronger associations with obesity and unhealthy diets than monetary rewards.

When assessing your eating habits or impulsivity, focus on food-specific choices rather than general financial decisions. Your tendency to choose immediate food rewards is a more accurate predictor of your dietary health than how you handle money.

Weight loss interventions must prioritize fat mass reduction over total weight loss, as preserving lean mass is critical for long-term health benefits and metabolic rate maintenance.

Do not just chase a lower number on the scale. Prioritize strategies that preserve muscle mass (like resistance training and adequate protein) while creating a caloric deficit. Health improvements are tied to fat loss, not just total weight loss.

Canagliflozin (100 mg/day) reduces epicardial adipose tissue (EAT) thickness in patients with type 2 diabetes over 6 months, independent of glucose lowering.

If you have type 2 diabetes, taking 100mg of canagliflozin daily for 6 months was shown to reduce the fat surrounding your heart (epicardial fat) by about 2mm. This reduction happened regardless of how much you lost weight overall, suggesting a direct benefit to heart health.

High cost, limited transportation, and poor quality/variety of fresh produce act as primary community-level barriers to fruit and vegetable consumption in low-income populations, thereby increasing obesity risk.

For low-income individuals, buying healthy food is often blocked by price and access, not just choice. To eat more fruits and vegetables, look for community programs that subsidize produce, visit farmers markets or flea markets for better variety and price, and prioritize stores that display fresh produce well. If transportation is an issue, carpooling or using community resources to access better stores may be necessary.

Resistance training induces an acute increase in myostatin expression followed by a chronic adaptive decrease in basal levels, facilitating hypertrophy.

When you lift weights, your body temporarily increases myostatin to manage muscle remodeling. Over weeks of consistent training, your baseline myostatin levels drop, allowing for greater muscle growth. Don't be confused by studies showing increased myostatin; this is often an acute response to the stress of exercise.

SARS-CoV-2 infection is associated with a significant reduction in exercise capacity (peak VO2), particularly in individuals with Long COVID symptoms, with mechanisms including deconditioning, dysfunctional breathing, chronotropic incompetence, and impaired peripheral oxygen extraction.

If you have Long COVID and feel exhausted by activity, standard 'push through it' advice may be harmful. Get a Cardiopulmonary Exercise Test (CPET) to identify if your limitation is due to deconditioning, heart rate issues (chronotropic incompetence), or breathing problems. Treatment should be tailored to the specific mechanism found, rather than generic exercise.

A sustained, multi-strategy social marketing campaign targeting awareness and behavioral intent significantly increases population-level fruit and vegetable consumption, with a statistically significant effect on vegetable intake.

To increase vegetable intake, implement a sustained, multi-channel public health campaign focusing on clear, simple messaging (e.g., '2 fruit, 5 veg') and addressing practical barriers like preparation time. The Western Australian 'Go for 2&5' campaign successfully increased vegetable consumption by 0.6 servings per day over three years through mass media, point-of-sale promotions, and community engagement.

Aerobic exercise preferentially induces oxidative fiber myokines (e.g., SDF1, irisin) which protect against cancer-induced atrophy, while anaerobic exercise induces glycolytic fiber myokines (e.g., IGF-1) that enhance protein synthesis.

To maximize muscle protection, vary your exercise. Aerobic exercise (like walking or cycling) boosts factors that stop muscle breakdown, while strength training boosts factors that build muscle. Combining both may offer the best myokine profile.

Myostatin and GDF11 are myokines that promote muscle wasting and are elevated in conditions like cancer, COPD, and aging, whereas exercise can reduce myostatin and restore other protective myokines.

High levels of myostatin, a protein that limits muscle size, are common in wasting diseases. Exercise helps lower myostatin levels, allowing muscles to maintain or regain mass more easily.

Long-term high-protein diets significantly improve fasting insulin levels compared to low-protein diets, but this benefit disappears when only high-quality studies are analyzed.

You may see a small reduction in fasting insulin with a high-protein diet, but this does not guarantee better weight loss or health outcomes. Do not rely on high protein solely for insulin management, as the effect is inconsistent and not clinically significant in high-quality studies.

High-protein diets significantly increase HDL cholesterol compared to low-protein diets, but only when studies involving Type 2 Diabetics are excluded.

If you do not have Type 2 Diabetes, a high-protein diet might slightly improve your HDL cholesterol, but this may be due to the specific fat composition of the diet rather than the protein itself.

Longitudinal home sleep monitoring using portable devices enables the identification of individual sleep patterns and correlations with modifiable behaviors (e.g., exercise, diet, stress), facilitating personalized health optimization and treatment strategies.

Use a home sleep monitor (like a wrist actigraphy device or bed sensor) for at least two weeks to establish a baseline. Look for patterns: does your sleep quality drop after late caffeine, high stress, or intense evening exercise? Use these insights to adjust your daily habits. The goal is not perfect sleep every night, but understanding your unique triggers to optimize your routine.

Interventions promoting stair use effectively increase physical activity at work, although the evidence quality is moderate due to study design limitations.

Encourage taking the stairs. Use signs or make the stairwell attractive. It’s a simple way to boost activity at work, even if the effect size is small.

Personalized behavioral interventions increase overall physical activity but have inconsistent effects on physical activity specifically at work.

Use goal setting and feedback to boost your overall activity. Don't expect it to automatically increase activity during work hours if your job is physically constrained.