Both trials of urolithin A for muscle in middle-aged and older adults, paid for by the supplement's maker, missed their main outcome. The 12% leg-strength gain was a side measure, beside a dummy-pill group whose hamstrings got 9.8% weaker. Rated Preliminary.
Interval walking beat steady walking on fitness, leg strength and blood pressure in the 2007 Japanese trial behind the trend, which analysed 42 of its 87 interval walkers. A Danish trial of 12 people a group agreed on fitness. Seven smaller trials since, by other universities, found it ahead on some measures and level on others, and poolings of interval training of every kind in type 2 diabetes put intervals slightly ahead on fitness and split on blood sugar.
Cod liver oil's vitamin D helped end rickets. As a supplement for well-fed adults, the biggest trial of it we found, 34,601 Norwegians over a winter, half of them on cod liver oil and half on corn oil, found it did not reduce colds, other respiratory infections or Covid. The joint trials are small and split, and the vitamin A in a teaspoon ran from 40 to 4,000 micrograms across the labels we tallied.
Free testosterone fell in two small studies of women with excess hair who drank spearmint tea. In the one randomised hormone trial we could read, against chamomile tea, the gap was not significant and doctor-scored hair did not differ. We found no study that gave people the tea, or spearmint alone, and measured acne.
Green tea carries nearly five times the catechins of black, by USDA measurements. But in trials that gave people one or the other, cholesterol came out level over four weeks. A six-month trial set each tea against a dummy tea, never against each other: black tea's fall in blood pressure was significant only in women, a subgroup result, and green tea's change was not significant in either sex. Pooled trials put each tea at a point or two off the top blood-pressure number.
Mostly yes. Next to refined breakfast cereals with the same carbohydrate, less processed oats raised blood sugar less, mostly in tests of people without diabetes; next to an omelette they raised it more, and instant oats kept little of the edge. The claim that oatmeal lowers A1C rests mostly on one oat-company trial with a whole diet attached.
Green tea extracts and catechin drinks took off about 1.4 lb more than a dummy, averaged over 38 short trials. The trials best guarded against bias could not tell green tea from a placebo, and in 237 women drawn from those who finished a year of strong decaffeinated extract or a dummy, the extract came to 0.6 lb, against 0.3 lb. The famous calorie burn is real, small, and plain caffeine did about as much.
B12 shots are a real treatment for people who cannot absorb B12. Sold for energy and weight loss to people who are not short of it, they have little behind them: in the placebo-controlled trials we found, dummy shots did about as well, and the one registered weight-loss trial we found never posted results.
Extra body fat raises inflammation markers, in genetic studies and weight-loss trials. The reverse did not hold up in the genetic studies of CRP, and anti-inflammatory drugs mostly did not take weight off: diacerein did in one small trial and two pills for psoriasis and lung disease do as a side effect, while one added 3.0 lb against a dummy pill in a 48-week trial of 286 adults with type 2 diabetes.
Pilates makes people stronger than doing nothing, most clearly past 60 and on practical tests such as standing up from a chair. Whether it adds muscle is less clear: three lean-mass poolings found no significant gain, and on MRI nine months grew the abs, while the hips barely changed. Against weights, it matched or lost on strength.