Hydration and weight loss: what water actually does
One hydration claim has randomised evidence behind it, one is real but trivial, and one is a number somebody made up in the 1940s. Worth telling them apart.
Weight and asthma: a different kind of asthma, and a diagnosis worth checking
Poor asthma control in someone with obesity is often blamed on inhaler technique. Frequently it is neither technique nor adherence — it is a different disease process.
Weight loss and gallstones: why losing weight fast raises the risk
The gallbladder is the one organ that does badly out of fast weight loss. Knowing why turns it into something you can largely design around.
Training fasted: does exercising before breakfast burn more fat?
Fasted cardio is one of the few fitness claims where the mechanism is real and the outcome still is not there. Here is where the gap opens up.
Artificial sweeteners and weight: what the evidence actually shows
The headlines said the WHO had told people to stop using sweeteners. What it issued was a conditional recommendation on low certainty evidence. Those two words did most of the work.
Glycaemic index explained: what it measures, and what it does not
A number measured on a lone food eaten by a fasted volunteer, then applied to a plate of dinner. It tells you something — just not most of what it is sold as telling you.
Sarcopenia: why strength matters more than muscle size
The definition changed in 2019, and the change tells you something useful: what you can do with the muscle matters more than how much of it there is.
Body recomposition: losing fat and gaining muscle at once
It is possible, it is slow, and most of the dramatic before-and-after claims are within the error bars of the machine that measured them.
Weight and back pain: a real link, but a modest one
The association is real and consistent. What it is not is strong, and it is not obviously mechanical either.
Weight and gout: why losing weight can trigger a flare first
Losing weight lowers urate in the long run and can raise it sharply in the short run. Knowing which phase you are in changes what you should expect.