Browse the evidence

Mechanical loading can prevent or significantly reduce bone loss associated with estrogen deficiency, demonstrating that loading dominates bone balance.

Even after menopause, regular exercise can help prevent bone loss. It may not reverse all loss, but it is a powerful tool for maintaining bone density.

Replacing saturated fatty acids with polyunsaturated fatty acids reduces the risk of coronary heart disease, whereas replacing saturated fat with carbohydrates does not.

Don't just cut fat; look at what you eat instead. If you reduce saturated fats (like butter or fatty meat), replace them with polyunsaturated fats (like vegetable oils, nuts, or seeds) to lower heart disease risk. Replacing them with carbohydrates (like bread or sugar) does not provide the same benefit.

Low fat diets do not provide a benefit for weight loss or prevention of overweight compared to low carbohydrate diets.

You do not need to follow a low fat diet to lose weight. Evidence shows that low fat diets are not superior to low carbohydrate diets for weight loss. Focus on diet quality and what you can sustain.

The PrimeScreen dietary assessment tool provides adequate reproducibility and validity for screening adult diets in primary care settings, performing comparably to longer, more time-consuming instruments.

Use the PrimeScreen tool to quickly assess your patients' diet quality. It takes only 5-10 minutes and provides reliable data on fruit, vegetable, and nutrient intake, comparable to much longer questionnaires. This makes it feasible to integrate dietary screening into routine primary care visits without overwhelming patients or providers.

Bariatric surgery-induced weight loss (approx 20%) reduces cravings for sweets and fast food, decreases preference for high sucrose concentrations, and lowers the hedonic value of sweetness (shifting from pleasant to unpleasant upon repetitive tasting) in women, with Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB) showing unique hedonic effects compared to laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding (LAGB).

If you undergo bariatric surgery, expect your cravings for sweets and fast food to decrease significantly, regardless of whether you have gastric bypass or banding. However, gastric bypass may uniquely make sweet foods taste unpleasant after repeated exposure, which could help you stick to a low-calorie diet more easily than banding. This change is driven by weight loss and anatomical changes, not just a smaller stomach.

Type 2 diabetes is associated with a 20-30% reduction in peak oxygen uptake (VO2peak) and reduced exercise tolerance, independent of known cardiovascular risk factors or overt cardiovascular disease.

If you have Type 2 Diabetes, you likely have a 20-30% lower maximum aerobic capacity than a healthy peer, even if you don't have heart disease. This is not just because you are less active; it is a physiological change in your heart, muscles, and blood vessels. To improve this, focus on gradual aerobic training, as it can help mitigate these specific impairments, but expect that your baseline capacity is lower than non-diabetic standards.

Maintaining an energy availability of 45 kcal/kg lean body mass per day is ideal for optimizing bone health, though achieving levels above 30 kcal/kg lean body mass per day is a more realistic target to minimize negative effects.

To protect your bones, aim for an energy availability above 30 kcal per kg of lean body mass daily. While 45 kcal/kg is ideal, it is often unrealistic for endurance athletes. Focus on eating enough to support your training load rather than restricting energy, as chronic low energy availability directly suppresses bone formation and increases fracture risk.

Higher animal protein intakes (1.2-2.2 g/kg body weight) do not harm bone health and may be beneficial, provided calcium intake is adequate.

You can safely consume high amounts of protein (1.2-2.2 g/kg body weight) to support muscle and bone health. Ensure you are eating enough calcium (dairy, leafy greens, fortified foods) to offset any urinary calcium loss. This combination supports bone strength without the feared bone loss associated with the 'acid-ash' theory.

Genetic variation significantly influences individual response to behavioral weight loss interventions, with specific loci (e.g., MTIF3, FTO) predicting differential weight loss outcomes.

Standard weight loss advice (calorie deficit + exercise) works for many, but its effectiveness varies significantly based on your genetics. If you struggle with standard plans, it may not be a failure of willpower but a mismatch with your biological predispositions. Genetic testing can help identify which dietary composition (e.g., high-protein) or activity type might be more effective for your specific genotype, allowing for a personalized rather than generic approach.

Long-term endurance exercise training improves overall health and functional capacity, particularly by enhancing independence in older adults and reducing premature mortality, through structural and functional adaptations in major organs.

Engage in consistent, moderate-to-high intensity endurance exercise regularly. The primary goal is not just immediate physical appearance but long-term organ health, cognitive function, and reduced risk of premature death. This is especially critical for maintaining independence as you age.

Long-term endurance training leads to specific structural and functional adaptations in the heart, including chamber enlargement and improved diastolic performance, without necessarily increasing myocardial oxygen consumption per unit mass under certain conditions.

Regular endurance training makes your heart larger and more efficient, pumping more blood with less effort at rest. This is a sign of a healthy, adapted heart.

Acute exercise increases brain blood flow redistribution to areas controlling locomotor and vestibular functions, and long-term training is associated with higher cognitive performance and potentially larger brain size.

Exercise helps your brain by directing blood to active areas and promoting factors that support neuron health. Staying physically active is a key strategy for maintaining cognitive function as you age.

A low-intensity mobile health intervention (Few Touch Application) improves self-management skills, specifically health service navigation and skill/technique acquisition, compared to usual care in patients with type 2 diabetes.

Using a diabetes app can help you feel more confident in managing your condition and navigating the healthcare system, even if it doesn't immediately lower your blood sugar numbers. It helps you learn skills to manage symptoms and communicate better with your doctor.

Higher cardiorespiratory fitness and greater muscle mass/strength are associated with lower mortality in diabetic patients, potentially explaining the obesity paradox.

Prioritize building muscle and improving cardiorespiratory fitness over focusing solely on BMI. These factors are stronger predictors of survival in diabetes than weight alone. Resistance training and aerobic exercise are key.

High-fat diets, specifically those rich in palmitic acid, exacerbate psoriasis by promoting gut dysbiosis, increasing intestinal permeability ('leaky gut'), and directly activating keratinocytes and immune cells.

Dietary fats matter for psoriasis. High intake of saturated fats, specifically palmitic acid (found in many processed foods and animal fats), can worsen psoriasis by damaging the gut barrier and directly activating skin cells. Reducing these specific fats may help lower inflammation.

Obesity negatively impacts asthma outcomes and has a causal link in the pathogenesis of adult-onset asthma, primarily through a pro-inflammatory state driven by an imbalance in the adipose organ.

If you have obesity and asthma, your excess fat tissue is actively creating inflammation that makes your asthma worse. This is not just about being less active; it is a biological mechanism. Weight loss, even without surgery, can reduce this inflammation and improve asthma control.

Consuming a high-fermented foods diet for 10 weeks significantly increases gut microbiota alpha diversity and decreases systemic inflammatory markers in healthy adults.

Eat about 6 servings of fermented foods daily (e.g., yogurt, kefir, kimchi, kombucha) for at least 6 weeks. Start slowly to avoid temporary bloating. This diet reliably boosts gut diversity and lowers inflammation markers like IL-6 in healthy adults.

A high-fiber diet increases gut microbiota functional capacity (CAZymes) but does not consistently increase microbiota diversity or decrease inflammation in healthy adults over a 10-week period.

Increasing fiber to ~45g/day boosts your gut's ability to process complex carbs (CAZymes) but may not boost diversity or lower inflammation for everyone. Your baseline gut health determines if you get anti-inflammatory benefits.

Hedonic feedback (reward learning) and cognitive feedback (self-regulation) interact with homeostatic signals to drive food intake, often overriding satiety.

Understand that eating is not just about hunger. Hedonic cues (ads, smells) and cognitive factors (stress, social norms) drive intake. To manage weight, one must manage the environment (reduce cues) and understand that self-regulation is an effortful process that can be depleted.

Metabolic adaptations (adaptive thermogenesis) resist weight loss, contributing to weight regain after loss.

Expect metabolic slowdown when losing weight. This is a normal defense mechanism. Long-term maintenance requires strategies that account for this, such as resistance training to preserve muscle mass and realistic caloric targets.

Urbanization disproportionately reduces occupational and household physical activity, while potentially increasing transport and recreational activity in High-Income Countries.

In urban areas, your job and home chores likely provide less physical activity than they did in rural settings. To maintain health, you must intentionally engage in leisure-time exercise or active transport, as urbanization naturally shifts you away from labor-intensive activities.

Postprandial hyperglycemia and glycemic variability are more strongly correlated with cardiovascular disease and mortality than fasting hyperglycemia alone, and controlling postprandial excursions reduces oxidative stress and hypoglycemia risk.

Don't just focus on fasting numbers. Large spikes after meals cause oxidative stress and increase heart disease risk. Managing post-meal glucose is crucial for long-term health.

Among individuals with type 2 diabetes, achieving a higher number of guideline-recommended risk factors within target range (specifically 5-7 factors) progressively reduces the excess risk of incident dementia, cognitive decline, and structural brain abnormalities, effectively mitigating the risk to levels comparable to non-diabetic controls.

If you have Type 2 Diabetes, managing your blood sugar is just one part of protecting your brain. To significantly lower your risk of dementia and cognitive decline, you need to address multiple health markers simultaneously. Aim to keep your blood pressure, BMI, cholesterol, and blood sugar within guideline-recommended ranges, avoid smoking, stay physically active, and eat a healthy diet. The more of these targets you hit, the closer your dementia risk gets to that of someone without diabetes.

A higher ratio of fast-food restaurants to full-service restaurants in one's local food environment is positively associated with an increased risk of obesity.

If you live in an area with many fast-food places but few sit-down restaurants, your risk of obesity is higher. This isn't just about your choices; it's about what is easily available to you. Look for neighborhoods with a better mix of food options, or be aware that your local food environment may be working against your health goals.