NutritionOct 27, 2026
Cutting back from one or two drinks a day lowers your alcohol-related risk, and you don't give up a proven survival benefit to do it, because moderate drinking hasn't been shown to help you live longer. A 2026 U.S. study estimated that two drinks a day for life carries about a 1 in 25 lifetime chance of dying from something alcohol caused. That figure is a modeled population estimate with wide uncertainty. It still makes the stakes of a familiar habit concrete, and it points to two things you control: your weekly total and your heavy nights.
Heart HealthOct 25, 2026
If you enjoy unsweetened tea, there's good reason to keep it in your day. A new study of nearly half a million Chinese adults found regular drinkers developed heart and blood-vessel disease less often. The evidence doesn't yet support drinking more than you'd naturally choose. The study's more consistent associations for black tea than green, and its lowest-risk point at several cups a day, come from observation and haven't been tested as a recipe. Staying active and not smoking remain the habits with the stronger evidence behind them.
Mental HealthOct 21, 2026
Blueberries are a reasonable food to eat when you're feeling low, but a daily blueberry regimen hasn't been shown to reliably relieve depressive symptoms. In the newest trial, sedentary older adults didn't improve significantly more on blueberry powder than on placebo. Earlier studies are split, including one encouraging result. The study's gut findings give researchers something specific to test. For persistent low mood, care with an established track record, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, is better supported for symptom relief.
NutritionOct 5, 2026
The two moves worth making at the dinner table while you're on antibiotics are to cut the added sugar and to lean on fiber-rich plants and fermented foods. A new Nature study makes the sugar part specific. In hospitalized blood-cancer patients on antibiotics, more sugar in the two days before a dose was tied to a further drop in gut bacterial diversity beyond what the drug itself did. The food that feeds your beneficial bacteria does the opposite. These are small changes, but the balance of upside to effort makes them one of the few useful things you can do at home while a course runs.
NutritionOct 5, 2026
Diet drinks seem to help you lose weight about as well as water does. In the longest head-to-head trial yet, people on diet drinks and people on water lost about the same amount over two years, with no clear winner.
MedicationSep 28, 2026
They can be, if nutrition checks start with the first dose and not months later. In a new study of US kids and teens starting these drugs, about 1 in 6 had a new deficiency diagnosed within a year, mostly low vitamin D. That sounds like the drug drains vitamins. The study can't show that. Many kids with obesity start out low, the drug cuts how much they eat, and almost none got nutrition counseling early enough to catch it.
NewsSep 15, 2026
If you want more strength and more power from a creatine supplement, plain monohydrate is still the form to buy. It's cheap, it's the version behind most of the human evidence, and it works when you pair it with hard training. Creatine hydrochloride is marketed as more soluble and better absorbed. Three recent randomized comparisons exist: two found HCl no better, and a third, a very small four-week trial in soccer players, hinted otherwise. For steady-state endurance, HCl has little direct evidence and monohydrate's benefit is mostly repeated hard surges, not VO2max or long time trials. That's a signal worth watching, not a reason to switch.
NewsSep 4, 2026
Broccoli sprouts are still worth eating, and the sulforaphane research holds up. The catch right now is one brand: sixteen people across Washington, Montana, and Idaho have Salmonella tied to Evergreen Fresh Sprouts broccoli sprouts. Toss any Evergreen sprouts in the fridge and clean what they touched. Sprouts are the rare vegetable where washing cannot undo contamination once a seed carried it in. If you want to keep eating them, cook them.
Hair HealthAug 9, 2026
The fastest way to work out why your hair is falling out is to read the pattern and the timing, not to hunt for one hidden cause. Gradual thinning at the temples, crown, or your part usually means genetically influenced pattern loss. Sudden diffuse shedding, often a couple of months after illness, childbirth, surgery, hard dieting, or a new medication, usually means a reactive shed that fades once the trigger passes. Patchy loss points to an autoimmune cause. The pattern tells you which tests are worth doing and which fixes are realistic.
Heart HealthAug 9, 2026
Four changes lower blood pressure with the clearest evidence, no new device or supplement required: a DASH-style eating pattern, cutting sodium, regular exercise, and losing weight if you carry extra. Most start working within weeks. Across trials and meta-analyses they tend to drop the top number by about 3 to 12 points, more if you start higher. What lifestyle can't do is replace urgent care or medication when your risk or your reading demands it.
NutritionAug 9, 2026
The most defensible daily target isn't eight glasses of anything, it's a range: about 2.7 liters of total water a day for women and 3.7 for men in the U.S. reference values. That total already includes the water in your food and in everyday drinks, not just plain water poured into a glass. For most healthy adults, thirst plus urine color usually works day to day. The number climbs in heat, with hard exercise, in pregnancy or breastfeeding, during illness, or if you form kidney stones. If you have advanced kidney disease, are on dialysis, or have a prescribed fluid limit, use that individualized limit instead of a generic calculator.
NutritionAug 5, 2026
Ordinary diet-soda drinking hasn't been shown to cause cancer. In 2023, IARC called aspartame "possibly carcinogenic." The same year, JECFA, another WHO-linked committee, read much of the same evidence with one difference: it asked what happens at the amounts people actually consume, and left its daily intake limit where it was. IARC's label flags a possible hazard, not a proven risk at ordinary intake. The signals behind it are limited. Some observational studies report modest cancer associations, and the animal and mechanistic evidence has big gaps. What follows is what the evidence supports, where it's shaky, and who has reason to cut back.
MedicationAug 2, 2026
Yes, part of what you drop on a GLP-1 is lean tissue, including some muscle, not only fat. But the trials show most of the loss is fat, and lean tissue makes up roughly a fifth to two fifths of the weight lost, a range that overlaps with dieting and bariatric surgery. The drug isn't melting muscle. The issue to watch is whether your strength holds, and that is something you can work on while the drug drives mostly fat loss.
Blood TestsJun 4, 2026
A single ratio buried in your routine bloodwork quietly tracks inflammation, immune activity, liver health, and nutritional status all at once. The albumin-to-globulin (A/G) ratio is one of the broadest prognostic signals in medicine: when it drops, outcomes get worse in conditions ranging from stroke to heart disease to infection to cognitive decline. Yet it never tells you exactly what's wrong.
That tension is exactly what makes this number worth understanding. The A/G ratio is a flare, not a map. It reliably signals that something significant is happening in your body, but it always needs context to mean anything specific.
CortisolJun 4, 2026
You’ve seen the claims online: “Flush out stress with this 7-day cortisol detox!” or “Reset your hormones with the ultimate anti-stress diet!” The allure is undeniable. The idea that you can sip, snack, and smoothie your way to inner peace is powerful. But is there any scientific truth to this popular wellness trend?
To answer that, we first need to understand what cortisol actually is, the role it plays in stress, and whether changing your diet can meaningfully impact your body’s stress response.
Liver HealthJun 4, 2026
Here's the bottom line: People with fatty liver disease who have little to no liver scarring (called fibrosis) live nearly as long as people without the condition. Those with significant scarring face meaningfully shorter lives. The good news is that you can dramatically influence which category you end up in through lifestyle changes that have been proven to work.
This article will help you understand what drives your risk, which interventions actually make a difference (with the numbers to back it up), and what specific actions give you the best return on your effort.
NutrientsJun 4, 2026
Potassium gluconate is one of the most bioavailable supplemental forms of potassium you can take, with absorption efficiency above 94%, putting it on par with whole food sources like potatoes. That's the good news. The less exciting part: in short-term human trials, supplementing with it at moderate doses didn't meaningfully move the needle on blood pressure or vascular function. So what is it actually useful for?
The answer depends on what you're trying to accomplish. If you need to correct low potassium, the evidence supports it clearly. If you're hoping a potassium supplement will replace dietary potassium and deliver the same cardiovascular benefits, the picture is murkier.
Gut HealthJun 4, 2026
Yellow diarrhea usually reflects either food moving too quickly through your gut, excess fat in your stool, or an infection working its way through your system. The color alone does not point to a single diagnosis. This article will help you understand the most likely causes, figure out when you can safely wait it out, and know when it's time to see a doctor.
NutritionJun 4, 2026
Stress is unavoidable. In small bursts it sharpens our reflexes and helps us push through challenges. The problem arises when stress lingers and cortisol, the body’s chief stress hormone, remains elevated for too long. Chronic cortisol elevation has been tied to anxiety, weight gain, weakened immunity, and even higher risks of cardiovascular disease. While practices like exercise and meditation are helpful, nutrition research now shows that what we eat can directly influence how much cortisol our bodies produce.
Cardiovascular HealthJun 4, 2026
If you're considering red yeast rice as a "natural" way to lower cholesterol, you've probably heard it's a gentler alternative to statin drugs. But research actually shows red yeast rice can cause the same side effects as statins, because it contains the same active ingredient. The good news? Serious problems are rare, and your risk depends heavily on the product you choose and the dose you take.
This article will help you understand what side effects to watch for, how often they actually occur, and what you can do to minimize your risk.
