Health Claims

In some parts of Russia where people don’t get enough iodine, lots of adults have lumpy thyroid glands, and most of those lumps are harmless. In two areas, Chechnya and Tula, over half and nearly half of adults had these lumps when checked with scans and tests.

Being around blue light at night, like from phones or screens, might keep your body from making the sleep hormone melatonin because it keeps stress hormone levels high, making it harder to fall and stay asleep.

Your thyroid evolved when humans ate lots of animal foods high in zinc, iron, and magnesium, so these nutrients might be the best for keeping it working well.

Not getting enough iodine might cause abnormal cell growth in important glands and organs like the thyroid, breasts, uterus, and prostate.

Eating fat from animal foods gives your body cholesterol that it needs to make important hormones, and it might also help keep your blood sugar and stress levels steady.

When your body doesn't make enough cortisol, insulin can drop your blood sugar too much at night, which might wake you up.

Your body's stress hormone, cortisol, needs to go down at night so your sleep hormone, melatonin, can rise and help you fall asleep.

When your thyroid slows down, your body might boost another hormone called cortisol to help keep your energy, blood sugar, and body temperature stable.

Your body uses iodine to build thyroid hormones — without iodine, it can't make the key hormones that help control your metabolism.

If your body makes too much cortisol for too long, your adrenal glands can get worn out and stop working well when you actually need to handle stress.

Your thyroid helps control your body's daily rhythms and hormone activity by listening to your brain and telling other hormone glands what to do.

People with rare harmful changes in the SRSF2 gene tend to die earlier — about 5.8 times more likely — than those without it, and this might be because of a blood condition that can lead to leukemia.

Having a certain version of a gene called APOE — especially the ε4 type — might mean people of European background don’t live as long, mainly because it raises the risk of heart problems and Alzheimer’s.

People with rare harmful changes in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes tend to live shorter lives, mostly because they’re more likely to get cancers like breast and ovarian cancer.

People with rare harmful changes in the TP53 gene tend to live shorter lives, mostly because they’re much more likely to get certain cancers like breast or blood cancer.

If you're of European descent and carry a rare broken version of the TET2 gene, you might not live as long — studies suggest these people are more than twice as likely to die earlier than those without it, possibly because of a blood-related aging process linked to cancer.

Some of the genes linked to suicide seem to affect brain areas that handle emotions, memories, and rewards—like the amygdala and hippocampus—suggesting that when these brain circuits don’t work right, it might raise the risk of suicide.

A genetic score that adds up many small risks can slightly predict who might be more likely to experience suicidal behavior — people with the highest scores are about 1.4 times more likely than average to be affected, though it only explains a tiny part of the overall risk.

Suicidal thoughts and actions are closely linked in our genes, but not completely — meaning while they share a lot of genetic risk, there are also different biological reasons why some people go from thinking about suicide to acting on it.

Genes play a small but real role in why some people might be at higher risk for suicide attempts or death by suicide, with about 6.7% of that risk linked to common genetic differences.

Scientists found 77 spots in our DNA linked to thoughts or actions about suicide — 59 of which are brand new discoveries — showing that genetics play a complex role in different ways people experience suicidal thoughts or behaviors.

In older male mice, genes play a bigger role in how long they live — by the time they reach super old age, about half the reason one lives longer than another comes down to their DNA, not their environment.

In mice, the genes that affect how long they live work differently in males and females — many of the gene interactions are totally separate between the sexes.

In mice, certain genes seem to link being heavier early in life to a shorter life, especially in males — but being heavier later in life is actually linked to living longer, showing that the effect of weight on lifespan changes with age and sex.