Home/Issues

• Issue 11 · 16 September 2026

  Cochrane read twenty two trials, and the comparator decided the answer

  A special issue on intermittent fasting. Eight papers from the last two years on a single methodological fact that runs underneath the whole field: measured against usual diet, fasting produces large effects with high certainty, and measured against a matched calorie restriction, most of them disappear.

  8 studies · with audio

• Issue 10 · 2 September 2026

  The kimchi bacteria that catch microplastic

  Seven papers, from 2023 to 2026, on whether the bacteria in fermented food can pick plastic particles out of a gut. Nothing here digests anything: the particles stick to the outside of the cells and leave unchanged. What the labs cannot agree on is whether that sticking is why any of it works, and one group tested the idea directly and ruled it out.

  7 studies · with audio

• Issue 09 · 1 September 2026

  Nobody agrees what a good diet is

  Nine studies from the second half of August. Ten competing definitions of a healthy diet agreed on eighteen people out of six thousand, a plain count of food groups beat the elaborate index built to replace it, and the standard way of measuring what gut bacteria make turns out to be two different numbers added together.

  9 studies · with audio

• Issue 08 · 27 August 2026

  The muscle retools in under a week, and it does not untool in a day

  A special issue on metabolic plasticity. Eight papers from 1983 to this year on how fast skeletal muscle rebuilds itself around whatever fuel it is given, why building up one pathway means turning the other one down, and what that trade costs when the two directions run on different clocks.

  8 studies · with audio

• Issue 07 · 19 August 2026

  Sixty years of carb loading, and two blinded trials

  A special issue on one question: which parts of the carbohydrate loading protocol actually matter. Eight papers from 1981 to this year, including the only meta analysis of loading protocols that exists, the closest thing to a head to head comparison of depletion against a taper, and a count of how many performance trials were ever blinded.

  8 studies · with audio

• Issue 06 · 17 August 2026

  Credit in the wrong place

  Six studies from the first half of August. The birth canal loses most of the credit for an infant's first bacteria, ten days of heat training deliver everything except the two things it is usually done for, and a creatine trial that the authors themselves refuse to let you read as a brain result.

  6 studies · with audio

• Issue 05 · 17 August 2026

  What one avocado a day actually did

  Nine studies from the second half of July, and six headlines checked against the papers underneath them. A ketone drink that worked in the heat without cooling anyone down, caffeine evidence built almost entirely on men, and three papers where a marker moved and the outcome went unmeasured.

  9 studies · with audio

• Issue 04 · 12 August 2026

  The ice bath did not blunt the adaptation

  Three months of cold water immersion after lifting left redox gene expression and mitochondrial enzyme activity exactly where the control group left them. It is the first issue where oxidative stress is one of our standing subjects.

  7 studies · with audio

• Issue 03 · 10 August 2026

  Drink up, or your fuel stops working

  Nine trained cyclists who let themselves get 2.8% of body mass down burned about 16% less of the glucose they drank, with no warning sign from the stomach at all. Also this week: a reported carbohydrate gap in female athletes, a Science review on sugars and the human brain, a plant based performance null, and a quiet week for gut science with one probiotic trial to show for it.

  12 studies · with audio

• Issue 02 · 3 August 2026

  The best fiber is the one you keep taking

  A six week randomized trial found people stuck with a daily inulin dose about six times better than with a supported exercise programme, a reminder that adherence, not potency, is where most gut protocols live or die. Elsewhere, a 200,000 adult cohort analysis reported that diet quality, not processing level, predicted disease risk, and a probiotic blend held the gut barrier roughly steady through a competitive weight cut.

  11 studies · with audio

• Issue 01 · 29 July 2026

  Two sugars beat one, even on an empty tank

  A double blind crossover trial found a 2:1 glucose to fructose blend oxidized more of the carbohydrate athletes actually swallowed, whether they were fully fueled or two days into an energy deficit. Elsewhere this week, carb loading research turned out to be mostly unblinded, and at the IRONMAN Worlds it was logistics and nerves, not knowledge, that broke women's fueling plans.

  8 studies · with audio