Health Claims

Over the past few decades, the number of adults with high blood pressure around the world has doubled — not because more people are getting it at their age, but because there are more people overall, and they're living longer. This means health systems need to handle way more cases now.

About 1 in 3 adults worldwide had high blood pressure in 2019, and that number hasn’t really changed since 1990 — but where people live makes a big difference, and population growth and aging have shifted where the burden is felt most.

Guys are more likely than girls to have a certain kind of heart attack even if they don’t have the usual risk factors like high blood pressure or smoking — 20% of men versus 15% of women who’ve never had a heart attack before fall into this group.

For heart attack patients, having common risk factors like high blood pressure or smoking doesn’t seem to make their chances of future heart problems any worse over the next six months — especially once you account for how sick they were at the time of the heart attack.

Heart attack patients who don’t have common risk factors like high blood pressure or smoking might actually be more likely to die in the hospital than those who do have those risks — which seems surprising, but that’s what this claim says.

More people having their first major heart attack don’t have the usual risk factors like high blood pressure or smoking — and that number went up from about 1 in 7 to 1 in 4 over 18 years.

Nearly 1 in 5 people having their first major heart attack didn’t have any of the usual risk factors like high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, or smoking — meaning many heart attacks happen in people doctors wouldn’t have flagged as high-risk.

In male white mice, certain food additives seem to mess with their hormone levels, possibly affecting how their brain and testicles communicate, which might be a sign their testicles aren't working right.

In male white mice, eating certain food additives for a month might stress their bodies by weakening natural defenses in their testicles or other tissues.

In male white mice, eating certain food additives for a month might harm the liver, based on blood tests showing higher levels of liver enzymes.

In male white mice, certain food additives like potassium bromate and a type of caramel coloring seem to lower sperm count after a few weeks, which might hurt their ability to reproduce, but sodium benzoate doesn’t seem to have a big effect even though there’s a small drop.

In male white mice, getting high doses of certain food additives for five weeks seems to cause weird-looking sperm, which might mean their fertility is harmed.

Taiwanese girls with early puberty who keep growing well while on monthly leuprolide shots are more likely to end up taller than their parents' height would predict — by about 6.5 cm on average.

Girls in Taiwan who start a certain puberty-delaying treatment earlier might end up taller as adults, especially if they start young enough to grow past their parents' expected height — but we can't say for sure what exactly causes the difference.

Taiwanese girls with early puberty who got monthly shots of a drug called leuprolide were more likely to grow taller than their parents' predicted height, especially if they started treatment younger and had more advanced bone growth.

Premenopausal Mexican women tend to have lower levels of a certain estrogen-related marker in their urine compared to other groups, and this might mean they're at higher risk for breast cancer because lower levels of this marker are linked to more cancer cases.

Taking a supplement called DIM every day might help lower body fat in Mexican women before menopause, but we don’t know how much it helps or if it really makes a meaningful difference.

Taking a supplement called DIM every day for a month doesn’t seem to change a certain hormone balance in premenopausal Mexican women that’s linked to lower breast cancer risk — but there might be a slight improvement a month after stopping.

Taking DIM supplements might help boost a certain healthy estrogen process in postmenopausal women who use estrogen patches — one study found their urine had 24% more of a specific marker linked to this process.

Postmenopausal women who use a supplement called DIM while on estrogen patches tend to have lower levels of a certain estrogen byproduct in their urine — about 23% lower — which might mean their bodies are processing the hormone differently.

Taking DIM supplements might lower a certain estrogen byproduct in the urine of postmenopausal women who use estrogen patches — one study found levels were 22% lower in those taking DIM.

Taking DIM supplements might lower estrogen levels in postmenopausal women who use estrogen patches — one study found their urine had less estrogen when taking DIM.

If postmenopausal women using estrogen patches also take a supplement called DIM, it might change how their body processes estrogen—lowering some types linked to higher risk and raising others that may be safer.

Scientists found a new way to track 30 different building blocks in cells at once, helping them see how cells use nitrogen in real time — and they spotted new patterns in how cells build DNA parts depending on their state.