Articles
Telehealth and online prescriptions 9 min
Online prescribing of controlled substances runs on a temporary DEA rule that expires December 31, 2026. It covers testosterone and stimulants. It does not cover GLP-1s, which are not on the DEA's schedules.
Weight and metabolism 10 min
Part D still cannot pay for a drug prescribed for weight loss, and that has not changed. What changed on July 1, 2026 is that a separate program, the Medicare GLP-1 Bridge, began offering three specific products for a $50 monthly copay outside the Part D benefit. The list is narrower than it sounds, and the $50 does not count toward your out-of-pocket cap.
Weight and metabolism 8 min
On a GLP-1 the binding constraint is not which foods you choose, it is how little food you can face. Semaglutide's own label reports nausea in 44 percent of people and constipation in 24 percent, and the drug delays gastric emptying. Eat protein first, keep fat modest at any single sitting, and treat fluid and fiber as scheduled, not incidental.
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Labs and biomarkers 7 min
An A1C below 5.7 percent is normal, 5.7 to 6.4 is prediabetes and 6.5 or above is diabetes. The test measures glucose stuck to hemoglobin over about three months, which means anything that changes the life of a red blood cell changes the result, and several common conditions do.
Labs and biomarkers 6 min
The NIH Office of Dietary Supplements treats serum B12 below 200 or 250 pg/mL as subnormal, and names methylmalonic acid as the most sensitive marker, able to confirm deficiency when serum B12 sits anywhere between 150 and 399 pg/mL. That range is wide, it covers many results reported as normal, and it is the whole reason B12 testing confuses people.
Labs and biomarkers 7 min
WHO's 2024 guideline defines anemia at a hemoglobin below 130 g/L in men and below 120 g/L in non-pregnant women aged 15 to 65. Those cutoffs are the 5th percentile of a healthy population, which means one healthy adult in twenty sits below the line by construction, and WHO itself treats anemia as a sign of something else rather than a diagnosis.
Hormones 10 min
The best longitudinal data says the menopause transition does not accelerate weight gain. Weight climbs through the forties on an unchanged slope and keeps climbing at the same rate through the transition. What changes is composition: fat gain roughly doubles while lean mass starts falling, and visceral fat begins rising at over 6 percent a year.
Labs and biomarkers 8 min
KDIGO defines chronic kidney disease as kidney abnormality present for a minimum of three months, so a single low eGFR cannot make the diagnosis. The classification has two dimensions, kidney function and albuminuria, and most people are only ever shown one of them.
Strength, mobility and aging 11 min
WHO's second-edition dementia risk guideline, published in July 2026, makes exactly one strong recommendation on moderate-certainty evidence for people with normal cognition: physical activity. It also recommends against vitamin B, vitamin E, omega-3 and multivitamin supplements for this purpose, and records insufficient evidence for depression, stroke, brain injury, vision and sleep interventions.
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Labs and biomarkers 7 min
The American College of Rheumatology defines asymptomatic hyperuricemia as a serum urate of 6.8 mg/dL or above with no prior gout flare and no tophi, and conditionally recommends against starting any urate-lowering drug for it. That recommendation rests on high certainty evidence, which is rare in this guideline.
Hormones 8 min
A raised TSH with a normal free T4 is called subclinical hypothyroidism, and the largest randomized trial in older adults found levothyroxine produced no improvement in hypothyroid symptoms or tiredness at one year. The AACE and ATA position is that treatment below a TSH of 10 should be tailored to the individual, not automatic.
Labs and biomarkers 10 min
The American College of Gastroenterology puts the true healthy upper limit for ALT at 29 to 33 IU/L for men and 19 to 25 IU/L for women, below what many laboratories flag. The commonest cause of a mildly high result is fat in the liver, and the question that actually matters is not the enzyme, it is whether the liver has scarred.
Heart health 9 min
Pooling 73 randomized trials and 5,060 participants, a Cochrane review found walking reduced systolic blood pressure by 4.11 mmHg, on moderate-certainty evidence. Diastolic fell less, on weaker evidence, and the effect was similar whether participants started with normal or high blood pressure.
Heart health 7 min
The 2025 AHA and ACC guideline kept the four categories introduced in 2017 and changed what happens inside them. Stage 1 hypertension now triggers medication for anyone with cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, diabetes, or a PREVENT 10-year risk of 7.5 percent or more, and the overarching treatment goal is below 130 over 80 for all adults.
Strength, mobility and aging 10 min
The exercise that builds bone and the exercise that stops you falling on it are not the same exercise. Cochrane rates the fall-prevention evidence high certainty for balance and functional work, and says the effect of resistance training alone, and of walking, on falls is uncertain. Bone density answers differ by skeletal site.
Labs and biomarkers 5 min
The standard adult TSH interval is 0.45 to 4.12 mIU/L. But the 97.5th centile rises from 3.56 in your twenties to 7.49 after 80, and 70 percent of older people flagged with a TSH above 4.5 are inside their own age group's range.
Heart health 6 min
Lp(a) is set by your genes, barely moves in a lifetime, and the European Atherosclerosis Society says to measure it at least once in adulthood. There is still no approved drug that lowers it, though the first large outcome trial reached its primary completion date in July 2026.
Heart health 5 min
Low HDL is a genuine risk marker, and every drug trial that raised HDL on purpose failed to help. One raised it by 72 percent and increased deaths. Here are the real categories, and why HDL is read rather than treated.
Labs and biomarkers 4 min
WHO puts iron deficiency in healthy adults below 15 µg/L, and below 70 µg/L if you have infection or inflammation, because ferritin rises when you are unwell. That is why a result inside your lab's printed range can still be deficient.
Preventive care and screenings 9 min
No body publishes a normal PSA by age. The decade-by-decade cutoffs you have seen are in the AUA guideline's background text, citing a 1993 paper, not in any numbered recommendation. Here is what age does decide, with the grades attached.
Labs and biomarkers 6 min
The National Kidney Foundation publishes an average eGFR for every age band, and it falls from 116 in your 20s to 75 after 70. The threshold that defines kidney disease does not move with it. Both facts are true, and the gap between them is an open argument in nephrology.
Heart health 8 min
No guideline publishes cholesterol targets by decade of age. What sets your target is your calculated 10-year cardiovascular risk. Here are the real LDL, HDL, total cholesterol and triglyceride categories from NCEP ATP III, the 2018 AHA/ACC guideline, the 2019 ESC/EAS guideline and MedlinePlus, with the one age boundary that sets a treatment threshold (40 to 75), and the one place these guidelines split by sex (HDL).
Strength, mobility and aging 13 min
The RDA is 0.8 g/kg/day and the 2026 Dietary Guidelines say 1.2 to 1.6. Nitrogen-balance work re-run in 2025 found no age effect. Protein without resistance training did nothing in a controlled-feeding trial. Even meal distribution failed in the one conflict-free trial in older adults.
Supplements 15 min
Magnesium has high-certainty null evidence for leg cramps, no current guideline grade for migraine, the lowest possible grade for depression, and an explicit ADA recommendation against it for glycaemic benefit. The clearest effect is as an osmotic laxative at about 2.6 times the upper limit.
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