Research papers that report differences in mortality between groups almost always report relative risk of all-cause mortality. A few papers report changes in absolute risk with a statement like "+10 per 1000 persons." But how can we convert a number like that to what we actually care about: life expectancy? Intuition suggests that if you … Continue reading Converting Mortality to Life Expectancy

This week, the Annals of Internal Medicine published five new research papers and a commentary arguing that red and processed meat aren’t bad for you. The authors argued that the quality of evidence is low to very low and that the impacts, if they do exist, are small to very small. Other public health scientists, … Continue reading How Not to Get the Meat Sweats

2019 has been an abundant year for observational studies of diet soda. Three new papers have re-analyzed data from four gigantic, long-term, prospective observational trials of nutrition and health. Three of the four trial cohorts ended up showing a correlation between consuming more than two diet sodas per day and an increase in the risk … Continue reading Diet Soda Is Fine

I’m training for a 3.5-mile race in September. I’ve run several marathons and half marathons in the past, but for the last year I had only been running about five miles a week until the beginning of July when I started training for this race. Last week, towards the end of a fast training run, … Continue reading What to Do About Foot Pain From Running

In this post, I’ll review the evidence for whether higher levels of gun ownership cause more people to die. I’ll save any discussion of what to do about it for another day. For context, there are nearly twice as many gun suicides as gun homicides. Nearly all gun homicides are not part of a mass … Continue reading Guns Kill People

What’s the deal with fiber? What are the benefits of eating more of it? Does it matter which kind of fiber you eat? One notable feature of dietary fiber is that your body (mostly) doesn't digest it. What relationship that has to its supposed health benefits, I can only guess. As a type-1 diabetic with … Continue reading Eat More Fiber

All I know about cholesterol is that HDL should be high and LDL should be low. I don’t know what cholesterol actually does in your body. Is LDL low enough below some threshold, or is lower always better? Can LDL be too low? Also, what are triglycerides? And why isn’t the “total cholesterol” line on … Continue reading Optimal Cholesterol