Health Claims

Giving bonus money only to doctors or only to patients doesn’t help lower cholesterol more than not giving any bonuses at all.

Most doctors who treat patients at high risk for heart problems think it's fair to offer money rewards to both doctors and patients to encourage better care — and their opinions don’t change even after being in such a program for a year.

Most doctors think it's fair to split bonus money with their patients when both work together to improve health, like lowering cholesterol.

Doctors who liked the idea of giving money rewards to themselves or their patients for staying healthy saw bigger drops in their patients' bad cholesterol, especially when both doctor and patient got rewards.

Older people with higher 'bad' cholesterol might actually live just as long or longer than those with lower levels, and having very low cholesterol could be risky — especially if you're elderly and have diabetes or a genetic form of high cholesterol.

Some heart benefits from cholesterol drugs like statins might come from how they reduce inflammation and blood clots—not just from lowering bad cholesterol. For some people, markers of inflammation were better at predicting heart problems than cholesterol levels were.

LDL cholesterol isn't just one thing — it's made up of different types of particles, some more dangerous than others. When 'good' cholesterol is very low, a different particle called Lp(a) might be the real culprit behind heart risk, not the usual cholesterol number doctors check.

If you're at high risk for heart problems, getting your 'bad' cholesterol really low—below 70—doesn't seem to help much more than keeping it just a bit higher, like between 70 and 100.

Even if someone has high 'bad' cholesterol, it doesn’t seem to reliably predict how much plaque is building up in their heart arteries — some people with very high levels have clean arteries, and their risk of heart events stays low if their scan shows no calcium.

Taking statins might reduce how well omega-3s protect your heart and could make your body less sensitive to insulin, which might hurt your heart and metabolism in some people.

Statins might mess with your cells' energy, block important chemicals, harden arteries, and reduce a key vitamin—leading to side effects in different parts of the body.

Statins are drugs that lower cholesterol by blocking a key enzyme in the liver, and doctors use them to help prevent heart disease — but they can cause side effects that might be worse than the benefits for some people.

High cholesterol might not be the main reason for heart disease, and having too little cholesterol could actually be risky — so the old idea that cholesterol causes heart problems might not tell the whole story, especially for preventing heart issues in healthy people.

Doctors might still focus on lowering LDL cholesterol because drugs that do this make a lot of money—over $16 billion a year—so money could be influencing medical advice.

Eating only meat gives your body enough of the right kind of iron to keep your iron levels and blood counts healthy—without too little or too much iron.

The idea that saturated fat causes heart disease might have started because scientists only shared part of the data — they published results from 7 countries that supported the link, but left out data from 15 others that didn’t show a connection.

A lot of people with heart problems don't actually have high LDL cholesterol — about half of them have normal or even low levels — so maybe LDL isn't the main cause of heart disease after all.

Eating a lot of protein every day — even more than 200 grams — won’t hurt your kidneys if they’re already healthy.

Eating too many carbs and calories — especially from sugary or processed foods — is what mainly causes fatty liver, not eating fat. Cutting out carbs or going on a carnivore diet might help reverse it.

Your liver makes its own sugar when you don’t eat carbs for a long time, and this process doesn’t hurt your liver or cause damage.

If someone has hormone problems from being too lean, eating only animal foods might help fix their hormones — and it could be the fat in their diet, not just calories or body fat, that makes the difference.

Eating only animal foods with lots of fat might keep a man's testosterone levels high, even if he's eating less or is already lean.

Eating only meat and eggs for a long time doesn't automatically mess up your blood tests for things like metabolism, hormones, liver, or kidney health.

In healthy young guys, better-quality daylight-like LED lights don’t seem to change daily melatonin levels or brain performance like focus and memory — so upgrading light quality might not always boost health or thinking skills.