Women's health after 40, and what the research actually supports
Send a stool sample to a company, get back a report naming hundreds of bacteria with percentages beside each one. The precision of the gut microbiome test is impressive. Researchers at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology decided to check that precision. They sent identical sample material to seven testing services and compared … Read more
Pairing vitamin C with iron is one of the most repeated pieces of nutrition advice there is. The chemistry behind it is genuinely solid — this isn’t folklore. What’s less known is that a 2020 trial found the pairing made no difference to blood results in people being treated for iron deficiency. One professional body … Read more
A lipid panel reports four numbers. Understanding what each represents is the easy part. The harder parts are the ones nobody mentions. Units differ by country and use two separate conversion factors. Fasting is no longer routinely required. And a fifth number can be calculated from what you already have — one that some guidance … Read more
Sarcopenia is diagnosed by measuring three things: how much muscle you have, how strong it is, and how well you move. That part is settled. What isn’t settled is where the lines fall. And when one expert group redrew those lines in 2019, the share of men diagnosed in one dataset dropped from 31.9% to … Read more
A T-score isn’t a measurement. It’s a comparison — and the thing you’re being compared to is a specific group of people, chosen decades ago, who may not resemble you at all. That sounds like a technicality. It isn’t. It changes what the number on your report means, and it’s the part almost no one … Read more