Over 27 years in the supplement industry, I have seen many things that bother me. One of the biggest things is the misrepresentation of clinical data to support supplement sales.

I keep up with clinical studies that are released each week. Most are simply not actionable for consumers. In other words, it is rare that a study is released that actually should change the average person’s behavior.

There are a few reasons why that is true.

The study is too narrow in scope to be useful to the average person. In other words, it only really addresses a health situation that is very specific and relevant to a small percentage of the population.
The study reports a benefit, but not at a level that is significant enough to be life-changing. In other words, if a study shows that drinking lime juice reduces your risk of breast cancer by 3%, does that mean you should go buy a juicer, even if you hate lime juice?
The study is simply not included for any number of reasons: lack of statistical significance, methodological flaws, etc.
I am going to give you a bit of insider information on the supplement industry. None of those three reasons stops wellness companies from touting those studies and using them to sell to you. They will happily misuse those studies.

While one would like to think that wellness companies are more moral than other companies, I assure you, they are not.

I am going to illustrate that with a study released in the last few days, touting the connection between high-fat cheese and reduced dementia risk. Cheese companies are going to love this one.

What the Study Found

Swedish researchers tracked about 27,670 middle-aged adults for 25 years to see whether what they ate back in the early 1990s had anything to do with whether they developed dementia later in life. They paid special attention to dairy, and they didn’t just lump it all together. They separated cheese, cream, milk, yogurt-like products, and butter into high-fat and low-fat versions to see if the differences mattered.

By the end of the study, about 12 out of every 100 participants had developed dementia. And here’s where it gets interesting: the people eating the most high-fat cheese (at least 350 grams a week, roughly 12 ounces) had a 13% lower risk of dementia. High-fat cream lovers saw a 16% lower risk, and the heaviest cream consumers had a striking 44% lower risk of vascular dementia specifically.

Butter, though, went the other way. People eating the most butter had a 27% higher risk of Alzheimer’s. And low-fat dairy? It did basically nothing either way.

Why might cheese help? It’s actually plausible. Cheese has a complex “food matrix” (the way its fat, protein, and calcium are packaged together) that seems to blunt the blood cholesterol effects you’d expect from its saturated fat content. Some genetic studies even suggest cheese may lower the risk of diabetes and high blood pressure, both of which are known dementia risk factors.

Why You Shouldn’t Get Too Excited

Here’s the thing: this study has some real limitations. Researchers only asked about participants’ diets once, at the very beginning. Over 25 years, people change how they eat, and there’s no way to know what anyone was actually eating in year 15 or year 20. It’s also observational, meaning it can show a pattern but can’t prove cheese caused anything.

The researchers also ran a lot of statistical tests, and when you do that, some results will look significant just by chance. And the “big” benefits aren’t actually that big in real terms. A 13% lower risk sounds impressive, but it translates to maybe 2 fewer people out of 100 developing dementia over 25 years.

How This Study Will Probably Get Twisted

Brace yourself for the headlines. “Cheese Prevents Dementia!” is basically inevitable. Someone on TikTok is already filming a video about how a daily cheeseboard is brain medicine. Keto and carnivore diet influencers will wave this study around as proof that saturated fat was never the villain, conveniently skipping over the part where butter made things worse.

Expect the specific numbers to get weaponized too. “Cut your dementia risk by 44%!” sounds like a guarantee, but it’s really just one finding from one observational study in one Swedish city. That’s not a prescription, it’s a clue.

The more subtle misuse is the one that matters most: people with a family history of dementia making big dietary changes based on preliminary findings. If Grandma had Alzheimer’s and you’re scared, a flashy study like this can feel like a lifeline. But rearranging your diet around a single study is rarely a good idea.

The honest takeaway? Cheese probably isn’t hurting you, and it might even be doing something helpful. But it’s not a shield, and this one study isn’t enough to change what you eat.

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Researchers recently looked at 44 different studies involving over 364,000 people to answer a pretty simple question: does eating fish make you less likely to get depressed? The short answer seems to be yes.

People who ate more fish had about a 21% lower chance of being depressed compared to people who didn’t eat much fish. For pregnant and new moms specifically, the number was similar (about 22% lower risk). And it wasn’t an all-or-nothing thing. The more fish people ate, the lower their risk went. Even just half an ounce of fish per day (that’s like one small bite) was linked to a 6% drop in depression risk.

So why would fish help? It comes down to what’s in it. Fish is packed with nutrients that your brain loves (omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin D, B vitamins, creatine, and selenium). Omega-3s are especially interesting because they seem to affect brain chemicals like serotonin and dopamine, which play a huge role in regulating your mood. They also seem to influence how your body handles stress hormones like cortisol.

The pregnancy connection makes sense too when you think about it. Growing a baby takes a lot of nutrients, including omega-3s. Your brain is rich in a specific omega-3 called DHA, and during pregnancy, some of that DHA gets redirected to the developing baby. That drop in the mom’s brain DHA levels could help explain why depression during and after pregnancy is so common (it affects roughly 12% to 20% of women).

Now here’s where we pump the brakes a little. These were all observational studies, meaning researchers just watched what people ate and tracked their mental health. They didn’t control what anyone did. So it’s possible that people who eat more fish also tend to exercise more, sleep better, or do other healthy things that actually explain the lower depression rates. The fish might just be along for the ride.

Bottom line: eating fish regularly seems to be linked to better mental health, but we can’t say for sure that the fish itself is the reason.

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You hear a lot of negative commentary about the nitrates found in some cured meats (such as ham).

On the other hand, you also hear about the benefits of nitrates found in vegetables such as beets.

So which is it? Are nitrates healthy or not? And is there a difference between the nitrates found in ham vs the nitrates found in beets?

Let’s address that second question first. The short answer is: the nitrate molecule itself is identical whether in ham or beets. The chemistry is the same. Sodium nitrate (NaNO₃) and potassium nitrate (KNO₃) are the same whether they come from celery powder, beet juice, or a curing salt packet. Your body can’t tell the difference.

The difference is entirely about context: what else comes along with it and what happens to it in your body.

Nitrates themselves are relatively harmless. The concern is when nitrates convert to nitrites, and then nitrites react with amines (abundant in protein-rich meat) under high heat to form nitrosamines. Those are the compounds linked to increased cancer risk. So the problematic chain is: nitrate → nitrite → nitrosamine.

Why beets get a pass

Beets come loaded with vitamin C and polyphenols, which act as antioxidants that block nitrosamine formation.

You’re not frying a beet at high temperature next to a bunch of amino acids

The nitrites that form from beet-derived nitrates tend to convert to nitric oxide instead, which is actually beneficial — it dilates blood vessels and lowers blood pressure (which ties into that multivitamin/blood pressure article you shared earlier, interestingly)

Why cured meats are a concern:

Meat is rich in amines, providing the raw material for nitrosamine formation. Cooking at high temperatures (e.g., grilling, frying bacon) accelerates the formation of nitrosamines, and processed meats often lack the protective antioxidants that would block that reaction.

How about uncured meats? Ironically, deli meats labeled “no added nitrates” often use celery powder or celery juice as the nitrate source, which is chemically the same thing. It’s mostly a labeling game. Again, the nitrates in themselves are not the issue.

So it’s not that one nitrate is healthy and the other is unhealthy. It is that nitrates in a vegetable matrix with antioxidants and no high-heat protein cooking tend to produce beneficial nitric oxide, while nitrates in a meat matrix cooked at high temperatures tend to produce potentially harmful nitrosamines.

Same input, different environment, different outcome.

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A big new study looked at whether popping a daily multivitamin could help prevent high blood pressure in older adults. The conclusion? It depends on what you eat.

Researchers followed nearly 9,000 U.S. adults (average age 71) who didn’t have high blood pressure at the start. Some took a multivitamin daily, others took a placebo, and the team tracked them for about three and a half years.

Overall, the multivitamin didn’t make a noticeable difference in blood pressure. People who took it developed high blood pressure at roughly the same rate as people who didn’t. But here’s where it gets interesting: when researchers looked more closely at diet quality, a pattern emerged. Among people who ate a less healthy diet (specifically, those who didn’t follow a Mediterranean-style eating pattern), the multivitamin cut their risk of developing high blood pressure by 19%.

That’s a meaningful finding. A Mediterranean diet emphasizes fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fish, nuts, and olive oil (foods packed with vitamins and minerals that help regulate blood pressure). If your diet is already rich in these foods, a multivitamin probably isn’t adding much that you’re missing. But if your diet falls short, those extra nutrients might actually fill in some important gaps.

This makes intuitive sense. We know from other research that nutrients like potassium, magnesium, vitamin C, and several B vitamins all play roles in keeping blood pressure healthy. A multivitamin won’t deliver the same doses you’d get from targeted supplements, but it might provide enough to make a difference when your diet isn’t covering the basics.

The bottom line? A multivitamin isn’t a magic bullet for blood pressure. If you already eat well, it probably won’t move the needle. But if your diet isn’t great and you’re not ready to overhaul it overnight, a daily multivitamin might offer protection, not just for blood pressure but many other things as well.

While saying this does not help us sell you more multivitamins, improving your actual diet is still the better long-term strategy. The multivitamin is more of a safety net than a solution.

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I have a feeling I am going to be talking about AI and medical advice a lot over the next few years. There is real danger here, and I want to start with a gentle reminder about communication in particular.

The smartest advice is often the least dogmatic. Intelligence about an issue recognizes the complexity and nuance. That is why, when talking to experts, you often hear the words “maybe” and “probably” rather than “for sure” and “certainly.” 

The problem is that this kind of nuanced conversation is not very satisfying, especially for people who are sick. They don’t want guesses; they want answers.

And as it turns out, AI is very good at giving answers on any topic, even though it is not necessarily an expert.

A recent study from MIT reveals a troubling pattern in how people evaluate medical advice: when the source is hidden, patients consistently rate AI-generated health guidance as more trustworthy and satisfying than advice written by physicians, even when the AI’s answers contain clear errors.

Published in NEJM AI, the study presented 300 participants with responses to common medical questions from three sources: physician-written answers from an online healthcare platform, high-accuracy AI responses that had been verified by doctors, and low-accuracy AI responses containing factual mistakes or inappropriate recommendations. Participants were not told which source produced which answer.

The results were striking. AI-generated responses scored significantly higher than physician responses across every measure of trust, validity, and completeness. When the AI was accurate, this preference was understandable. The more concerning finding was that even the flawed AI responses performed on par with, and in some cases outperformed, the doctors’ answers in perceived trustworthiness. Participants indicated they would follow the incorrect AI guidance at rates comparable to physician recommendations.

The researchers attribute this effect largely to how AI communicates. Large language models produce polished, clearly structured explanations that avoid excessive medical jargon. This fluency creates an impression of authority and thoroughness. However, without medical training, most readers cannot detect when AI fabricates details, oversimplifies complex conditions, or offers unsafe recommendations. The confidence of the delivery masks the inaccuracy of the content.

The implications for patient safety are significant. Researchers warned that participants showed a tendency to pursue unnecessary care or unsafe treatments based on erroneous AI output, which could lead to delayed diagnoses, medication misuse, or harm from self-treatment.

Speaking for myself, I find all this a bit troubling.

Here’s a bit of advice. Go to your favorite LLM to get help on your medical condition, but hold its opinions very loosely until you get confirmation from real experts.

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You might assume that if two foods have the same amount of protein, they’ll build muscle equally well. It turns out that’s not quite right.

A recent study tested this directly. Sixteen young, active adults did a tough leg workout and then ate one of three things: low-fat pork (20g protein, 4g fat), high-fat pork (20g protein, 21g fat), or plain carbs with no protein at all.

Same protein. Very different results.

Both pork options boosted muscle protein synthesis (basically your muscles’ rebuilding process) well above the carb-only group. But the low-fat pork triggered significantly more muscle building than the high-fat version, despite being identical in protein content.

So what’s going on?

The “food matrix” matters more than you think. This is the idea that food isn’t just a delivery vehicle for nutrients; it’s a complex system where fat, vitamins, minerals, fiber, and even the physical structure of the food all interact with each other. That interaction changes how your body digests and absorbs protein.

In this case, the higher fat content in the fatty pork appears to have slowed digestion, meaning amino acids (the building blocks from protein) trickled into the bloodstream more slowly and peaked at lower levels. Since muscle building is triggered by a spike in amino acids (especially leucine) the blunted response likely explains the weaker muscle-building effect.

There’s also a more technical angle: pork fat is rich in certain fatty acids that may actually activate an enzyme called AMPK, which pumps the brakes on muscle protein synthesis. The high-fat pork group showed greater AMPK activation, which isn’t what you want post-workout.

This same “food matrix” principle shows up elsewhere. Whole eggs build muscle better than egg whites alone, even at the same protein dose. Whole milk outperforms skim milk. It’s not just about the grams of protein; it’s about everything traveling alongside that protein.

The practical takeaway? When you flip over a food label and check the protein grams, that number is a starting point, not the full picture. How fast that protein is digested, what fats or other compounds come with it, and how your body absorbs the amino acids all play a role in what your muscles actually get.

That said, don’t overthink it. One study, 16 people, a few hours of measurement — it’s interesting science but not a reason to panic about your pulled pork. Eating a variety of quality protein sources over time matters far more than optimizing any single meal.

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I love eating, and honestly, I love some food that tastes good but is unhealthy. As we all know, the struggle between trying to eat healthy and craving unhealthy food is real.

That is why I love to see studies like this one hit the news. The bottom line? Cocoa is possibly healthy for your heart.

A big study followed nearly 9,000 adults in their early 70s for about 3.5 years to see if taking a daily cocoa extract supplement could help prevent high blood pressure. None of them had heart disease or cancer going in, and all started with reasonably healthy blood pressure.

The most interesting finding was that cocoa extract didn’t help everyone equally. For people who started with truly normal blood pressure (the lower end of healthy), it reduced their chance of developing high blood pressure by 24%. But for people whose blood pressure was already creeping up (still technically “okay” but on the higher side) it didn’t seem to make a difference. And the benefit didn’t kick in until about two years of daily use.

This lines up with what we already know about cocoa. The flavanols in cocoa (the beneficial compounds) help blood vessels relax, reduce inflammation, and support healthy circulation. Dozens of shorter studies have shown that cocoa products can modestly lower blood pressure, especially at higher doses and in people who already have high blood pressure.

What makes this study unique is the long game. Most previous research only looked at blood pressure changes over a few weeks or months. This one tracked whether people actually developed high blood pressure over the years, which is a much more meaningful question.

That said, there are some reasons to be cautious. The finding about normal vs. elevated blood pressure subgroups wasn’t something researchers specifically set out to test (it emerged from digging into the data, which means it could be a fluke). There could also be lifestyle differences between the groups that weren’t fully accounted for. And yes, Mars (the candy company) funded the study and provided the supplements, so that’s worth keeping in mind.

One theory for why it only helped the lower blood pressure group: cocoa might work by slowing down the natural rise in blood pressure that happens as we age, rather than actively bringing it down. If your blood pressure is already elevated, there’s less runway before you cross into high blood pressure territory, making the effect harder to detect.

The takeaway? It’s a promising first look, and it makes sense given everything else we know about cocoa flavanols. But it’s just one study, and we’ll need more research, ideally with higher doses, before drawing firm conclusions. In the meantime, there are worse excuses to enjoy some dark chocolate.

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We usually recommend probiotics for gut health, but gut health actually affects the entire body. As an example, a new randomized controlled trial suggests that the probiotic strain Lacticaseibacillus paracasei PS23 can meaningfully improve sleep quality, though it fell short of reducing perceived stress.

The six-week study, published in Annals of General Psychiatry in October 2025, enrolled 45 office workers experiencing moderate to high stress levels. Participants took either 20 billion CFU of L. paracasei PS23 or a placebo daily. While the probiotic group saw no significant reduction in stress compared to placebo, they did experience notable improvements in overall sleep quality. Specifically, participants in the probiotic group fell asleep faster, stayed asleep more easily, and showed improvements in trait anxiety (the baseline tendency to experience anxious feelings, as opposed to situational anxiety triggered by specific events).

The results echo findings from a 2022 study of clinical nurses under high stress, which also examined PS23. That earlier trial found anxiety improvements were limited to participants with the highest stress levels, suggesting the strain’s effects may depend on who’s taking it and what you’re measuring.

The gut-brain axis (the bidirectional communication network between the digestive system and the central nervous system) has become one of the more promising areas of nutritional research. Probiotics that influence this pathway, sometimes called “psychobiotics,” are of particular interest for their potential effects on mood, anxiety, and sleep. PS23 appears to sit in this category, though the evidence base remains thin.

The takeaway? If you’re struggling with sleep quality, probiotics (in particular, L. paracasei PS23) may be worth watching as more research develops. But anyone hoping a single probiotic will meaningfully reduce their stress levels should temper expectations. As with most things in the supplement world, the answer is nuanced, and more data is needed.

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I love fruit juice, and in theory, it should be good for you. Unfortunately, it probably isn’t, for many reasons.

A big problem with fruit juices is their high sugar-to-fiber ratio. Fiber is important because it helps the body moderate how it processes sugar. Hitting the body with a ton of sugar without any fiber is just not the best idea.

On a related note, I recently came across this study. A large meta-analysis looking at 22 studies and nearly 236,000 people found that drinking more sugar-sweetened beverages like soda is linked to a higher risk of gout.

The research pulled together data from cross-sectional, cohort, and case-control studies. People who drank more sugary drinks had about 33% higher odds of elevated uric acid levels and 21% higher odds of developing gout.

Fruit juice showed a more mixed picture—it was associated with somewhat higher uric acid levels, but the connection to actual gout wasn’t as clear.

The likely culprit here is fructose, which is a major component of sugar and can directly raise uric acid levels. What’s interesting is that not all fruit juices are created equal in this regard. Orange juice might be less problematic because it’s packed with vitamin C and flavonoids that could offset some of the fructose effect. Apple juice, on the other hand, is high in fructose without as much vitamin C to balance things out, so it may have more impact on uric acid.