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Health

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Health

Chanting Calms People Down, and the Most Likely Reason Is Extremely Boring

Mantra recitation across several religious traditions converges on a slow, sustained, vocalised exhalation. That is also the single breathing pattern with the best evidence for shifting the autonomic nervous system.

Sep 4, 2026/3 min read

Japa mala, the strings of beads used to count repetitions of a mantra, hanging for sale at a shop in Varanasi

Health

Detox Is a Word That Describes Two Real Things and Almost Nothing Sold Under Its Name

Detoxification is a genuine medical process and a genuine biochemical one. Neither has anything to do with juice cleanses, foot pads or teas, and the marketing depends on never naming which toxin is being removed.

Sep 4, 2026/3 min read

A person holding a glass of green smoothie behind a table of cut fruit

Health

Yoga Nidra Is Not Sleep, and the Research on It Is Better Than the Research on Most Things Sold Beside It

A guided practice of lying still while systematically moving attention around the body. It has accumulated a real randomised trial literature for sleep, stress and anxiety, and a rebranded version has attracted claims that literature does not support.

Sep 4, 2026/3 min read

A group lying flat on their backs on mats in savasana during an outdoor session, which is the posture yoga nidra is practised in

Health

Yoga Works for Back Pain, Slightly, and Sends About Seventeen People per Hundred Thousand to Hospital

A Cochrane review of twenty-one trials found yoga probably better than no exercise for chronic low back pain, with small improvements. Emergency department data shows injury rates rising, most steeply among people over sixty-five.

Sep 4, 2026/3 min read

A large outdoor yoga class on a beach, participants spread across the sand following a teacher

Health

Turmeric Supplements Solved the Absorption Problem, and That Is Exactly Why They Damage Livers

Curcumin is barely absorbed, so manufacturers add piperine, which can raise bioavailability twentyfold. Liver injury reports have followed the formulations that work best, which is not a coincidence.

Sep 4, 2026/3 min read

Fresh turmeric rhizome, sliced to show the orange interior, beside a heap of the ground spice. The concern in this piece is with concentrated capsules rather than with the spice itself

Health

Ashwagandha Has Good Trial Data for Stress and a Growing File of Liver Injury Reports

The most popular Ayurvedic herb in the world looks reassuring in clinical trials and much less so in hepatology case series. A systematic review has identified thirty-seven cases of ashwagandha-associated liver injury.

Sep 4, 2026/3 min read

Dried ashwagandha roots, the part of Withania somnifera that is ground for supplements

Health

Oil Pulling and Tongue Scraping: One Has Modest Evidence, the Other Is Mostly Enthusiasm

Two Ayurvedic oral practices have gone mainstream on very different evidence bases. Neither replaces a toothbrush, and one of them has a Cochrane review that found two trials and forty people.

Sep 4, 2026/3 min read

A stainless steel tongue scraper, the curved blade drawn from the back of the tongue forwards

Health

Nasal Rinsing Works, and the Water You Use Can Kill You

Saline nasal irrigation has reasonable evidence behind it for sinus symptoms. It also has a rare, almost uniformly fatal complication, and avoiding it requires one specific instruction that most people have never been given.

Sep 4, 2026/3 min read

A blue ceramic neti pot with its measuring spoon, the shape used for pouring saline through one nostril and out of the other

Health

The Immune System Appears to Remember Obesity for Years After the Weight Has Gone

Work in EMBO Reports finds obesity leaves a chemical mark on CD4 T cells that outlasts weight loss. The authors suggest the immune system may need years of sustained maintenance to reset, and say plainly that no long term human study confirms it.

Sep 1, 2026/3 min read

Health

A Tape Measure Round the Waist Did the Same Job as Four Measurements and a Formula

In 1,900 American adults, waist circumference on its own matched a new multi measurement framework against a proper body fat scan. BMI alone missed a substantial number of people who met the body fat criteria for obesity.

Sep 1, 2026/3 min read

A tailor's cloth tape measure coiled on a table, marked in centimetres and inches

Health

Adults Over Forty Thought Twelve Per Cent Faster After a Month With an Air Purifier

A randomised crossover trial with a sham unit found the effect only in participants aged 40 and over. It is also a secondary outcome analysis, it ran for a month, and it had fewer than ten people over 60 in it.

Aug 31, 2026/3 min read

Evening traffic streaming along Interstate 93 north of Boston, with the city skyline behind, the road the air filtration trial was run beside