Posts Tagged ‘scientific rigor’

The attention that goes daily to the subject of preserving muscle and its importance is off the chart. Just this week a call to action about muscle loss in diabetes and a new systematic review on the effects of resistance exercise on cognitive function are demanding our attention. It is clear that preserving muscle as […]

“Basically, all the scientific leadership has been wiped out at the CDC. They’re all political people now who are running the CDC and determining what the public health message is going to be,” says Julie Rovner. She has been reporting on the CDC for four decades now and has never seen anything like this. Leadership […]

Novo Nordisk made a bold gamble on oral semaglutide for delaying the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. Yesterday, as can happen with bold gambles, it did not pay off. A daily 14 mg oral dose of semaglutide was no better than placebo for preventing disease progression as measured by the Clinical Dementia Rating – Sum of […]

“Studies show food is medicine” says WBUR, with Allison Aubrey quoting studies that suggest a benefit from prescribing healthy food to people at risk for metabolic and diet-related diseases. Under the Food Is Medicine banner, hyperbole is easy to find. The people who have taken up this cause are selling hard. So the headlines that […]

As an article of faith, many people, even some who should know better, dispense advice that sweeteners are bad for metabolic health and weight management. They rely on observational evidence and theories about how they might have subtle effects to undermine health. But no direct evidence. Now, in Nature Metabolism comes a randomized controlled study to […]

“This high-sugar fruit may actually lower diabetes risk‚” says the press release from George Mason University. Lately, breathless headlines have bombarded us with magical mango thinking about preventing diabetes with this delicious fruit. Food is medicine, right? Well, not really. Food is food. Medicine is medicine. And the study that props up these sensational headlines […]

The attention economy has been getting a lot of, well, attention lately. In fact, the phenomenon is nothing new. People have been competing for the attention of Americans since the rise of cheap daily newspapers in the 19th century. But lately it seems that the quest to command attention is taking over more and more […]

Honestly, we share the underlying concern. Rising global temperature are a threat to our health and welfare. But twisting a scientific paper to make the point doesn’t help. It actually hurts the cause. New research in Nature Climate Change documents an association between added sugar consumption and rising temperatures. That’s a fair question to study. […]

We are on a steady diet of studies with a seemingly singular aim: to persuade us ultra-processed foods are really, really bad for us. We get the point. But the nourishment for our brains from this unbalanced research diet seems deficient. The latest is an RCT that shows us oatmeal made from scratch is a […]

Making America Healthy is an industry with very low barriers to entry. Lots of people have fun with it. They also make lots of noise. The trouble is that because of those low barriers to entry, most of them, including some academics, do very little to actually make Americans healthy. Instead, they generate headlines and […]