What the evidence actually says.
The evidence on food, movement, sleep and the habits of daily life, read properly. We open the paper, check the numbers, show you the shape of the evidence, and say plainly what it does and does not establish.
The evidence, read properly, every three days.
We read the paper so you do not have to. Free, and no supplement ads, ever.
Powered by ButtondownHalf an hour of light after bedtime, and a thicker heart wall
A wrist sensor measured light after bedtime for seven days rather than asking anyone to remember it. In the 11,071 UK Biobank adults whose hearts were later scanned, the most exposed group, an average of 33.9 minutes above 3 lux a night, carried 2.4 percent more left ventricular mass and 1.5 percent greater wall thickness than the group that logged none. Across the wider 73,286, heart failure ran at 361 cases per 100,000 person-years against 218. The study is observational and cannot show the light did it.
Same weight lost, keto cut more liver fat
Fifty-five adults with obesity, prediabetes and fatty liver were given every meal they ate until each had lost about a tenth of their body weight. Insulin sensitivity in muscle rose by about half on all three diets, with nothing to choose between them. In the liver the diets separated: fat inside the liver fell 67 percent on the ketogenic diet against 45 percent on the Mediterranean and very low fat diets, and prediabetes resolved in 50 percent of the ketogenic group against 29 and 7 percent. Forty-two people finished, 14 per group, and every outcome measured was a marker rather than an illness.
Fewer heart attacks, the same disability-free survival
In 9,971 Australians aged 70 and over with no heart disease, diabetes or dementia, atorvastatin cut major cardiovascular events by 30 percent over a median 5.9 years, 297 against 412 on placebo. The trial's second headline measure, survival free of death, dementia or persistent physical disability, did not move: 637 against 676, a gap it could not separate from chance.
Four kinds of movement, two directions
A pooled analysis of 74 studies and 4,227,297 adults split physical activity by where it happens. Leisure-time activity sat alongside a 24 percent lower risk of dementia. Physical work sat alongside a 20 percent higher one. The certainty of that evidence, the authors say, is very low to low.
The dementia prevention trial where both groups improved
LatAm-FINGERS ran a structured lifestyle programme against plain health advice in 1,065 older adults across 11 Latin American countries. The structured group improved more. The advice group improved too, and that is the number worth looking at.
The exercise and depression result is weaker than the headlines said
A Cochrane review of 73 trials was reported as showing exercise rivals therapy. Read the trials it rests on and the picture is thinner, and the review says so itself.
A chair, a cone, and seven years of death records
Taiwan measured 13,423 adults aged 65 and over on seven simple fitness tests, then followed them through the national death registry for a median of seven years. The fittest fifth died at a rate 61 percent below the least fit. What the study cannot say is whether getting fitter is what makes the difference.
Sleep apps beat doing nothing, and lose to a person
A review of 29 randomised trials found app-delivered insomnia therapy works. Where trials put it directly against a human therapist, the human won.
Fasting and plain calorie cutting come out almost level
A review of 99 randomised trials found most fasting schedules matched ordinary daily calorie restriction. One pattern edged ahead, by about a kilogram.
