Health Claims

If a muscle works best when it's stretched out, it grows more when you do full movements. But if it doesn't rely on that stretched position, how far you move doesn't really change how much it grows.

If you're someone who lifts weights, doing certain calf exercises only partway through the motion—starting with your toes pointed up and moving to neutral—might build a bit more muscle in your calf over eight weeks compared to doing the full movement, especially if you also do extra partial reps after failure. But the results aren’t totally clear yet.

If you keep doing extra calf exercises at the top of the movement after your regular sets are done, it still helps your calf muscles grow — and pretty well, too, over two months.

If you're into lifting and want bigger calves, doing either full reps or starting with partial reps (and finishing with extra partials after failure) twice a week for eight weeks can give you noticeably bigger calf muscles.

If you're someone who lifts weights and trains your calves twice a week, doing partial reps starting from your toes pulled all the way up to neutral might grow your calf muscles a tiny bit more than doing full reps plus extra partials at the top — but the difference is super small and not very certain.

If young women do calf raises that only use the last part of the ankle's movement, they'll gain less muscle in the back of the calf compared to other ways of doing the exercise — just 3% to 6% after 8 weeks.

If young women do calf raises three times a week for eight weeks, only moving their ankle partway up gives bigger calf muscles than going through the full motion — so how far you move might really matter for muscle growth.

Doing calf raises through a shorter range of motion, when the muscle is more stretched, might build more calf muscle in young women compared to doing full up-and-down reps — especially in the inner part of the calf.

If women who don't usually work out do leg exercises through only part of the movement, they get stronger in just that part of the motion — and it doesn't help much with the rest of the movement.

Doing certain leg exercises that only use the last part of the movement doesn’t seem to help untrained women build muscle in specific parts of their thighs — it’s about the same as not exercising at all.

If women who don't usually work out do certain leg exercises only through part of the movement—when the muscle is stretched—they might build more muscle in specific spots compared to doing the full movement or nothing at all.

Most untrained guys would still choose to do tough calf exercises to the point of failure if it means more muscle growth, even if it hurts a bit more — so the extra effort seems worth it for most.

If new guys to lifting do calf raises on a Smith machine and finish each set with their toes pointed all the way up, they’ll gain about 6.7% more calf muscle thickness in 10 weeks with workouts twice a week.

If untrained guys keep doing partial calf raises after they can't do full ones on a Smith machine, they can nearly double their workout volume, which might help their muscles grow more.

If untrained guys do extra mini reps on calf raises after failure, pointing their toes upward, they gain more calf muscle than stopping when they can't do any more full reps with toes pointed down.

If untrained guys keep doing little extra calf lifts after they can't do any more full ones on a Smith machine, they'll probably grow their calf muscles a bit more over 10 weeks.

In Japan in 2019, more than 2 out of every 3 robot-assisted stomach and gut surgeries used the da Vinci Xi robot — making it the most popular surgical robot for these operations nationwide.

In Japan in 2019, people who had robot-assisted surgery to remove part of their esophagus had more serious complications than those who had similar robotic surgeries on their stomach or rectum.

In Japan in 2019, doctors used robots to remove stomach and bowel cancers, and in most cases, they got all the cancer out with clean edges under the microscope.

In Japan in 2019, almost all robot-assisted stomach and gut surgeries were done by specially certified surgeons, and these operations only happened in a small number of expert hospitals — showing that robot surgery was tightly controlled and only available in top centers.

In Japan in 2019, doctors used robots to do tough stomach and bowel surgeries. Even though the operations took a long time, there was very little bleeding and almost never had to switch to open surgery, which means the robot systems worked really well.

In rats with high uric acid, taking allopurinol helps lower their uric acid and blood pressure, and fixes blood vessel problems — suggesting it might reverse blood vessel damage caused by high uric acid.

When rats have too much uric acid in their blood, their blood vessels don't respond as well to insulin because key signals inside the cells aren't working right and less of a helpful blood vessel chemical (nitric oxide) is made.

When rats were given a drug to raise their uric acid levels, their blood pressure went up and their blood vessels didn’t relax as well when insulin was present — this suggests high uric acid might hurt blood vessel function and raise blood pressure in animals.