Browse evidence-based analysis of health-related claims and assertions
Even though glucagon was once thought to be bad for you because it raises blood sugar and stresses the heart, turning it on purpose — especially with other hormones — might actually help your metabolism.
A drug called retatrutide helps people lose a lot of weight—sometimes over 70 pounds—by targeting certain hormones, but it works so well that it can cause unexpected health problems.
Feeding lab rats a super high-fat diet seems to cause liver inflammation and fat buildup, based on changes in key markers in their blood and liver.
In lab rats, eating a diet super high in fructose (like from sugary foods) makes their blood fat levels skyrocket—way more than other unhealthy diets—and this seems to mess up how their body handles fat overall, not just hurt the liver.
In lab rats, eating a diet high in fat, sugar, and cholesterol causes worse liver damage than just eating a high-fat diet — with more signs of inflammation and scarring in the liver.
Feeding rats a diet super high in fructose for 4 months doesn’t really hurt their liver overall, even though a few tiny signs of fat buildup show up under a microscope.
Feeding rats a diet super high in fat leads to fat building up in their livers after 16 weeks — kind of like what happens in fatty liver disease. Scientists saw this through lab tests, scans, and looking at liver tissue under a microscope.
Feeding mice a keto diet for several months in a warm environment gives them serious liver damage — like swelling, scarring, and inflammation — even if they don’t become overweight.
In mice, blocking two specific signals in the body (IL-6 and JNK) fixes blood sugar problems, fatty liver, and insulin resistance caused by a keto diet—basically undoing those issues in just 3 days.
In mice, eating a keto diet for just 3 days seems to raise a certain protein linked to inflammation, especially from belly fat, which might lead to liver problems and trouble using insulin.
In mice, going on a keto diet for just 3 days seems to make their livers less responsive to insulin—even though their blood sugar is lower—suggesting early signs of metabolic problems.
In mice, eating a super high-fat, very low-carb diet causes fat to build up quickly in the liver — way more than with other diets — which could be harmful.
Even when rats eat fewer calories, a keto-like diet can still cause unhealthy changes in the liver, like making too much sugar and having trouble breaking down proteins.
When rats eat a diet high in fat and low in carbs, their livers start making more sugar from lactate but get worse at breaking down an amino acid called alanine — especially if they're also eating fewer calories.
In rats, eating a high-fat, low-carb diet makes their bodies worse at handling sugar—even when calories are the same or higher—but doesn’t change how sensitive they are to insulin. This suggests the sugar problem might not be caused by insulin issues in these animals.
Rats on a very low-carb, high-fat diet for a month ended up with higher blood sugar and more fat in their livers—even if they didn’t eat more calories. This kind of diet might not be great for liver and blood sugar health in animals.
If someone has mild type 2 diabetes, how much fat builds up in their liver might be linked to how their pancreas hormones are balancing each other — when liver fat goes up, the hormone balance shifts the other way, and vice versa.
If you're an adult with mild type 2 diabetes, switching to a keto diet for 12 weeks might lower a fat in your blood linked to liver fat, more than a low-fat diet would.
If you have mild type 2 diabetes, cutting carbs way down — even without changing your calorie intake — might cut liver fat by nearly a third in just three months.
Eating fewer carbs and more protein for a week might help turn off fat-making genes and turn on fat-burning and metabolism genes in the livers of obese people with fatty liver disease.
If you're an obese adult with fatty liver, how much folate is in your blood might help explain how much fat is in your liver — and it could account for nearly 1 in 5 cases, even after considering body weight.
If you're an obese adult with fatty liver disease, switching to a low-carb, higher-protein diet for just two weeks might quickly boost good gut bacteria that make folate—and your blood folate levels could go up in as little as one day.
If you're an obese adult with fatty liver, going on a low-carb diet for just two weeks—even without cutting calories—might slash your liver's fat production by nearly 80% and boost fat burning in your body by almost 5 times.
If you're an obese adult with fatty liver disease, switching to a very low-carb, high-fat diet for just two weeks might cut your liver fat by nearly half—and you could see improvements in as little as one day.