Browse evidence-based analysis of health-related claims and assertions
In parts of India where the water and soil are naturally polluted with arsenic, rice soaks up way more of this toxic stuff than wheat does—so people who eat a lot of rice are getting more arsenic in their bodies than those who eat wheat.
Mechanistic
If you swap out cooking oils like soybean or corn oil for olive oil, butter, or coconut oil, you might lower the stuff in your body that causes inflammation and make your blood fats more stable and healthy.
Causal
When the good and bad bacteria in your mouth and gut get out of balance, it can trigger body-wide inflammation and leaky gut, which may raise your risk of heart disease.
When your diet messes up your gut bacteria, it can cause your whole body to be inflamed, which might make your muscles and joints hurt—but eating anti-inflammatory foods like veggies, fish, and nuts can help calm that down and ease the pain.
Drinking too much coffee or energy drinks over a long time can keep your body in 'fight or flight' mode, making your heart race and increasing your chances of irregular heartbeats and heart strain.
Bacteria from gum disease can escape from your mouth into your bloodstream and may help cause calcium buildup in your heart arteries and valves, which can lead to heart problems.
When you cook food at high heat—like grilling or frying—it creates harmful compounds called AGEs, which can trigger your body’s inflammation system, making you more prone to chronic swelling and related health issues.
Eating too many omega-6 fats (like in vegetable oils) compared to omega-3 fats (like in fish) can make your body more inflamed, which can damage your blood vessels and lead to clogged arteries over time.
Eating too much sugar, especially fructose found in sodas and sweet snacks, tricks your liver into making excess fat, which can lead to a fatty liver, make your body less responsive to insulin, and raise your risk of heart disease.
If you cook rice, let it cool in the fridge, and then reheat it, it turns into a type of starch that your body digests more slowly—so your blood sugar and insulin don’t spike as much after eating it.
If you soak your rice in water overnight and then throw out that water before cooking, you’ll end up with rice that has less of the harmful arsenic your body can absorb.
People who got two shots of the shingles vaccine were less likely to develop dementia later on—even when researchers checked for things like the pandemic or how dementia was diagnosed—so it might actually help protect your brain.
Correlational
Getting two shots of the shingles vaccine might help older adults stay mentally sharper for a few years, lowering their chance of developing mild memory problems that can come before dementia.
Women who got two shots of the shingles vaccine seem to have a bigger drop in their risk of getting dementia compared to men who got the same shots—maybe because their bodies respond differently to the vaccine in ways that protect the brain.
People who got the shingles vaccine twice were less likely to get dementia later on than people who got the tetanus shot — and this wasn’t just because the shingles-vaccine recipients were already healthier to begin with.
Getting two shots of the shingles vaccine when you're 65 or older might lower your chances of getting dementia by about half, even if you've had shingles before or come from any background — it’s not a guarantee, but studies suggest a strong link.
People in England and Wales who were eligible for the shingles vaccine were less likely to die from dementia, according to a big study of death records over nine years — but this doesn’t mean the vaccine prevents dementia, just that the two things happened together.
People born just before and just after September 2, 1933, were treated almost the same except one group got a shingles vaccine and the other didn’t—scientists used this tiny difference to see if getting the shingles shot helped reduce deaths from dementia.
Getting the shingles shot after age 80 might help people with dementia live longer, even if they already have dementia — it doesn’t stop dementia from starting, but it might slow it down.
Women who got the shingles vaccine may be a little less likely to die from dementia than women who didn’t, but for men, the vaccine doesn’t seem to make a difference in dementia deaths.
Getting the shingles vaccine when you're 80 or older might slightly lower your risk of dying from dementia over the next nine years—especially for women—but not so much for men.
Before people got the shingles vaccine, those just barely eligible for it were just like those just barely ineligible — same health habits, same chronic conditions — so researchers could trust that any differences later were likely due to the vaccine, not pre-existing differences.
Descriptive
Getting the shingles vaccine didn’t make people go to the doctor more for other things or change how often they were diagnosed with common long-term illnesses like diabetes or high blood pressure—so if people who got the vaccine also had less dementia, it’s probably because the vaccine itself helped, not because they got better overall care.
People born just after November 2, 1936, got a free shingles shot because of a government rule, and way more of them got vaccinated than people born just before that date—proving the rule worked to get more people protected.