Health Claims

Too much fat around the organs is linked to higher blood sugar, higher bad fats in the blood, and lower good cholesterol, which can lead to diabetes and heart problems.

Descriptive

Muscles that stretch across two joints (like the hamstrings) don’t grow as well when one joint is bent — you need to position both joints right to fully stretch them and make them grow.

Correlational

Doing a full squat or starting a bicep curl from the bottom makes your muscles grow more at the far ends (like the top of your thigh or the outer part of your bicep) than doing partial reps from the top.

Correlational

Just stretching your muscle under light weight won’t make it grow — you need to push hard while it’s stretched out, like doing a bicep curl slowly at the bottom where it’s fully extended.

Correlational

Even if you lift heavier weights with your muscles mostly bent, you don’t grow bigger muscles than if you lift lighter weights with your muscles stretched out — the stretch matters more than how heavy the weight is.

Correlational

Lifting weights when your muscles are stretched out more (like at the bottom of a squat or a full bicep curl) tends to make them grow bigger than lifting with your muscles mostly shortened, as long as there's still resistance pushing back when they're stretched.

Correlational

If you eat enough protein (like 25g per meal), your muscles will grow even if you eat almost no carbs—carbs aren’t needed for building muscle.

Descriptive

Insulin doesn’t make your muscles grow bigger after lifting weights—it just helps stop your muscles from breaking down, especially if you’ve eaten enough protein.

Mechanistic

Rats that ate almost no carbs but lots of fat and protein still grew just as much muscle as rats eating a normal high-carb diet when both did weightlifting.

Descriptive

Even if your muscles are low on stored sugar (glycogen), your body still builds muscle just as well after lifting weights, as long as you eat enough protein.

Mechanistic

Even eating very little carbs—like just 30 grams a day—doesn’t make you weaker during weightlifting workouts, which means you might not need to eat a lot of carbs to lift heavy.

Descriptive

Exercise makes muscles better at using insulin and the liver produce less sugar—but those improvements don’t match up with changes in chemerin levels, meaning chemerin isn’t the main reason exercise helps insulin work better.

Correlational

When older overweight people exercise and their blood chemerin drops, their bad fats (cholesterol and triglycerides) also go down—so chemerin might be connected to how the body handles fats.

Correlational

After doing intense exercise for 12 weeks, older overweight people’s pancreases release less insulin right after eating sugar—and that drop matches a drop in a chemical called chemerin, hinting chemerin might tell the pancreas how much insulin to make.

Correlational

When older, overweight people lose belly fat from exercise, a chemical called chemerin in their blood also drops—so chemerin might be a sign that their fat tissue is getting healthier.

Correlational

When older, overweight people do intense exercise for 12 weeks, a fat-related chemical in their blood called chemerin goes down—and that drop is linked to losing belly fat, better cholesterol numbers, and less insulin being released after eating sugar.

Correlational

Even if you don’t move through the full range, doing the exercise where your muscle is stretched the most (like halfway down in a squat) builds more muscle than doing it where the muscle is bunched up (like a shallow squat).

Causal

Whether you're working your quads, calves, or biceps, stretching them fully during exercises helps them grow bigger — this works for many different muscles, not just one.

Causal

Even the middle parts of your muscles grow more when you stretch them fully during workouts — it’s not just the ends that benefit from full range of motion.

Causal

When you stretch your muscles fully during workouts, the ends of the muscles grow more than the middle parts — the stretch makes the muscle ends bulk up more than the center.

Causal

When you do strength exercises where your muscles are stretched the most (like lowering a weight fully), you build more muscle than when you only move partway through the motion, no matter which muscle you're working.

Causal

BMI used to look like it protected people who were overweight—but when you look at belly fat, that protection disappears, and higher BMI just keeps getting riskier.

Correlational

Being severely obese doesn’t automatically mean you’re at higher risk of dying—what matters more is whether you carry fat around your middle.

Correlational

People who are too thin have a much higher chance of dying early—even more than those who are obese—suggesting being underweight is just as dangerous as being very overweight.

Correlational