Commentary rather than instruction. These are the pieces where I argue with something — a guideline, a policy, a fashion — rather than explain how to do something. The name is deliberately old-fashioned; it means thinking a matter out thoroughly.
Americans spend over fifty billion dollars a year on supplements, mostly to prevent disease. The randomised trials designed to test whether that works have now reported — including the ones stopped early for harm. Twenty-one references.
Read the article →I began certain that good habits could give anyone vibrant health. Tens of thousands of patients later, the honest answer is more interesting — including a figure in my original article that I had to correct.
Read the article →If God did not intend us to drink, why do we carry an enzyme that processes alcohol? The biology answers it plainly — and what we have learned since about gut bacteria brewing alcohol makes the question stranger than it looks.
Read the article →He delayed surgery for nine months on a tumour of the kind where time is usually on your side. Five mistakes in the reasoning — and the research since that has measured what the trial period costs.
Read the article →Universal screening between ages 9 and 11 was recommended without the evidence most people assume sits behind it. What the guideline actually rests on, and what has happened since.
Being updated — coming soonSatisfaction scores are increasingly used as a proxy for quality of care. Whether they measure it — and what happens to medicine when they are tied to payment.
Being updated — coming soonA form that prints the patient’s date of birth, then asks the physician whether the patient is under two. A small absurdity — and 13 hours a week per physician, with 29% reporting a patient harmed by the delay.
Read the article →Why a pregnancy hormone became a weight loss product, what the trials found, and why it keeps returning despite them.
Being updated — coming soonWhat heredity decides, what circumstance decides, and why the argument is usually framed as a contest when it is not one.
Being updated — coming soonA piece about biochemistry, design, and the limits of what an enzyme can tell you about intention.
Being updated — coming soonThese are being rewritten one at a time as the site moves to its new design — each checked against the current literature and given a full reference list before it goes back up. The mailing list below is where I announce them.
The practical counterpart to these essays: what to eat, how much to move, and what the evidence actually supports for preventing chronic disease.
Browse articles →A complete ten-part series on what actually works for lasting weight loss — motivation, biochemistry, plateaus, sleep, genetics and self-deception.
Start the series →Free calculators built on published equations rather than guesswork, each explaining which equation it uses and how wide the error bars really are.
Try the tools →