The claim fails against the available evidence.
The whole scare rests on one 2009 study of 20 rugby players that measured DHT and never looked at anyone's hair. The 56% rise it found moved men from 0.98 to 1.53 nmol/L — the normal range is 0.8 to 3.5. In 2025 a trial finally examined hair directly for 12 weeks and found no difference at all.
On the same day in July 2023, IARC called aspartame 'possibly carcinogenic' — a hazard statement, third of four levels — and JECFA reaffirmed the safe daily intake, noting a 70 kg adult would need 9–14 cans of diet drink a day to exceed it. The press ran the first report. WHO's own nutrition director said safety is not a major concern at normal doses.
Across 21 studies, the people who lifted and did cardio still built a large amount of muscle — less than lifting alone, but nowhere near losing any. The cost is real and it depends on how much you do, and running causes it while cycling mostly doesn't.
Twenty-one trials longer than eight weeks, screened from 23,441 records: a trend toward benefit, and a confidence interval that includes zero. Then the FTC found the marquee study's subjects had been told to diet and exercise — while the press release said they hadn't.
Fifteen women, a ventilated hood, and 100 g of celery: digesting it cost 13.76 of the 16 calories it delivered. That is 86% — far closer to free than we first said. It is still not negative, and the researchers said so themselves.
Oxidise 10 kg of fat and 8.4 kg of it is exhaled as carbon dioxide. Eccrine sweat is water, sodium and chloride — lipid is not a meaningful constituent. You cannot sweat out something that is not in the sweat.
The only randomised trial of a corset for weight control watched compliance fall from 100% to 10% in nine months — the authors said it 'could therefore not be evaluated.' There is no mechanism, and the one measured effect of abdominal compression is worse reflux.
Cold exposure does raise the calories you burn, and over weeks of daily cold air one study trimmed fat mass slightly. But the research used hours of cool air, not a three-minute plunge — and no study shows a cold plunge takes fat off.
Twenty-four years of literature contains zero randomised trials of a commercial detox tea. The mechanism is a laxative — and even four to six litres of diarrhoea cuts calorie absorption by only about 12%. The liver damage, though, is documented.
The checklist this page always promised, finally on the page. It sorts your answers into what the ECSS/ACSM consensus says must be excluded first — energy intake, iron, thyroid, infection, mood — and refuses to give you a score, because that consensus found no marker good enough to be generally accepted.