Health Claims

For people who are obese, eating a low-carb diet doesn’t seem to make a noticeable difference in their blood sugar or how well their body uses insulin.

If you're an adult with obesity, sticking more closely to a low-carb diet might help lower your top blood pressure number and overall cholesterol a little — but the data isn't strong enough to say for sure, and it doesn't seem to affect your bottom blood pressure number or triglycerides.

Even though low-carb diets can improve some health numbers, in people who are already obese, sticking more closely to a low-carb eating pattern might actually go hand-in-hand with having more body fat and a higher weight.

If obese adults in Iran eat fewer carbs and more fat, they might be less likely to have a group of health problems like high blood pressure and high blood sugar that raise heart disease risk.

If you're an adult between 20 and 50 who's obese, eating fewer carbs and more fats might be linked to healthier blood pressure, better cholesterol, and lower triglycerides — but we can't say for sure that the diet caused these benefits from this study alone.

If you have type 2 diabetes and use a low-carb diet app for 3 months, there's a good chance—about half the people in the claim—that your blood sugar could get as low as someone without diabetes.

If adults with type 2 diabetes use a low-carb diet app for 3 months, they end up eating fewer calories without trying, mostly because they eat less carbs — and they naturally replace those carbs with more protein and fat.

If adults with type 2 diabetes lose 5% or more of their weight in 3 months using a low-carb app, they see better blood sugar control than those who lose less weight.

If you have type 2 diabetes and use a low-carb diet app for 3 months, your top blood pressure number might drop by about 6 points — which could help your heart — even if you don’t change your exercise or bottom blood pressure number.

If adults with type 2 diabetes eat fewer carbs—dropping from about a third to less than a fifth of their daily calories for three months—they might see their average blood sugar drop by a full point, and the more they cut carbs, the better their blood sugar control tends to get.

Doing intense drop-set workouts until your legs can't do another rep causes clear signs of muscle tiredness in beginners, based on electrical signals from the muscles — making it a solid way to push muscles hard during a workout.

When beginners do super intense weight workouts where they keep going until they can't anymore, their form gets worse as each set goes on — but that same level of worsening happens every set, like clockwork.

When beginners do intense leg press workouts to the point of exhaustion, their muscles get increasingly tired, and this shows up as changes in muscle activity signals — some muscles work harder, others change how they fire, and these shifts tell us fatigue is building up.

If you're already used to lifting weights, going all the way to failure on each set doesn't give you better strength or endurance gains than stopping two reps short — at least over 8 weeks.

Doing one set of strength training until your muscles are totally tired might help you jump higher than stopping two reps early, but we’re not sure if the difference really matters.

Going all the way to muscle exhaustion during one set of strength training might give you a tiny bit more muscle growth in your arms and legs than stopping two reps early — but the difference is small and not always clear.

Doing short, simple strength workouts just twice a week might be enough to build muscle and get stronger — even if you're already used to longer, more intense routines.

Cutting carbs works better than cutting fat if you're trying to manage insulin-related health problems like type 2 diabetes.

Eating fewer carbs might help lower your blood pressure if you have high blood pressure.

Eating a lot of carbs might make your body hold onto more salt, which could raise your blood pressure.

Lifting weights close to failure helps build more muscle the closer you get, but it doesn’t seem to matter as much for getting stronger—so the best way to grow muscles might not be the best way to get stronger.

You don’t have to push yourself to the absolute limit during strength training to get stronger—studies show you can make similar gains even if you stop a few reps short.

If you lift weights and push your muscles closer to total exhaustion, you’ll likely gain more muscle size than if you stop earlier — even when doing the same number of sets and reps.

If you're a guy who lifts weights, you can get your leg muscles working just as hard by stopping a set a couple of reps before failure as you would by going all the way to failure.