One study links this plant to testosterone and it was done in male albino rats. Four years later the same three authors, at the same doses, reported enzymes leaking out of liver and kidney cells.
Eight men in a sealed metabolic chamber showed the mechanism plainly: alcohol speeds your metabolism up and stops your fat-burning cold. Then thirty-one population studies failed to find the weight gain.
Everyone trained one arm the same way for twelve weeks. In that arm, biceps size changed by anywhere from minus two percent to plus fifty-nine, around an average of nineteen. How much of that spread is real is still argued over.
The healthy ranges on bathroom scales are BMI lines turned into body fat by a 2000 paper that called them provisional. We could not trace the other chart's athlete and fitness bands. Studies tied to metabolic syndrome or death draw their lines in different places, and your reading is softer than its decimal point.
Cut 500 a day and the rule says 52 lb in a year. In supervised studies people lost less than it predicted, and a model predicts a half-time of about a year, because your expenditure falls as you shrink. Same arithmetic, a different trajectory.
572 studies and 486,538 cancer cases say yes, with a clear dose-response. The glass-a-day benefit was at least partly a counting error, and a genetic study of men in China found no protection from moderate drinking.
Fifteen randomised trials: cutting saturated fat probably cut cardiovascular events by about 17%, with little or no difference to how long people lived. Twenty-one cohort studies found no significant link. A 2026 review says how much it helps depends on your risk.
Thirty-one percent of American adults take one. On heart disease and cancer, after nine trials and 51,945 people, the task force could not say whether it helps or harms. There is one small real signal, and two supplements it recommends against.
Across 16 randomised trials, protein source did not change strength, and animal protein's lean-mass edge was small: 0.90 lb in under-50s. A later 30-trial pooling found soy and milk the same.
Across 121 randomised trials the strength effect was large. The effect on everyday physical ability, from the same review, was small. Both numbers are real and you should have been given both.