Hippocrates was soaking in the Grecian hot baths and advocating their health benefits about 2,500 years before scientists began studying heat therapy in the lab. In the last few decades, the body of evidence has grown exponentially, with dozens of reviews and meta-analyses agreeing that saunas, in particular, confer cardiovascular and molecular benefits. In this month’s column, I won’t dispute the abundance of studies on the health benefits of saunas, nor will I debunk the commercial claims; there are too many of both. Instead, I’ll draw attention to a problematic subset of the literature that may be biasing the conclusions and undermining the belief that saunas are good for one’s health. I’ll also provide some much-needed context on the benefits of sauna, context that’s conspicuously absent from the mainstream coverage.

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Original article & references: https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/are-saunas-good-for-you-yes-but/

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I dislocated my shoulder during wrestling practice in 2015. The nature of this type of injury leaves an indelible mark, and I can still recall it vividly nearly a decade later. I’d toppled backward, arm outstretched and externally rotated to break my fall—an amateur mistake. The pain was instant and searing. I felt a “fizzing” sensation up and down my arm from the nerve damage, and my ligaments screamed at being forced beyond their natural range of motion. My shoulder felt “out of place.” Because it was. Despite it being my first dislocation, I knew immediately what I’d done.

“Can someone find me a doctor,” I said calmly, as though asking to borrow a pen, “and tell them I’ve dislocated my shoulder.” I lay motionless until the paramedics arrived, fearing that any movement would distend my shoulder from its socket like a life-size Stretch Armstrong.

Most traumatic musculoskeletal injuries can be described with similar precision. But if you ask someone with a concussion to recall their experiences, you get something less exact. Some American football players describe how the world was spinning, like being drunk but without the fun part. Others report seeing stars, feeling like their legs were “independent of their bodies,” or feeling “distant” and watching the remainder of the game through a dense, unrelenting fog.

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Skeptical Inquirer magazine: https://www.skepticalinquirer.org

Original article & references: https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/woodpeckers-dont-play-football-the-concussion-repercussion/

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“It hurt like hell,” said Italy’s Angela Carini to her cornermen. Her welterweight contest against Algeria’s Imane Khelif lasted just forty-six seconds. The pugilists were squaring off in the preliminary rounds of the Olympic boxing competition in Paris. After absorbing a few solid right hands and fearing her nose was broken, the Italian retreated to her corner, and the referee waved off the contest. “I am heartbroken,” said Carini after the fight. “I went to the ring to honor my father. I was told I was a warrior, but I preferred to stop for my health. I have never felt a punch like this.” The official ruling of abandonment (ABD) progressed Khelif to the next round, and she went on to win the gold medal. Carini later apologized for her comments.

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Skeptical Inquirer magazine: https://www.skepticalinquirer.org

Original article & references: https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/the-boxer-who-sparked-a-transgender-debate-without-being-transgender/

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The United States has twice as many supplement brands as it does McDonald’s restaurants. That’s a lot of supplements. Of those 30,000 or so, only a handful have robust evidence for efficacy. Prominent among them are carbohydrate supplements—the drinks and gels of concentrated sugar that cyclists, triathletes, and marathon runners chug throughout their races (over 1,500 carb gels were consumed during each stage of the recent Tour de France). Carb gels are ubiquitous in sports because carbohydrates are the body’s primary fuel for intense exercise. Although our bodies retain a stockpile of carbohydrates as glycogen in the muscles, we burn through it during exercise like a steam engine burns through coal. We must refuel on the go to prevent early fatigue. The supplement manufacturers have one task: to deliver the calories and nutrients they promise on the product labels. In this month’s column, I’ll tell the story of one supplement company that failed in this basic duty and the group of athletes who exposed the fact by exercising their critical faculties.

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Skeptical Inquirer magazine: https://www.skepticalinquirer.org

Original article & references: https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/spring-energy-the-supplement-exposed-by-skeptical-athletes/

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The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is to professional mixed martial arts what the NFL is to American football, the NBA is to basketball, and the MLE is to hot-dog eating: the world’s premier organization for hosting and promoting the sport. In fact, in the past three decades, the UFC has had more influence on the evolution of mixed martial arts than any other organization. In an article I wrote for Skeptical Inquirer last year (an article that got me Twitter-blocked by UFC President Dana White), I explored the organization’s penchant for alternative therapies— specifically how cupping, cryotherapy, and acupuncture found their way into the UFC’s Las Vegas performance institute. Like a father dealing with his kid’s night terrors, I thought I’d put it to bed. I was wrong. Alternative therapies are just the tip of the UFC’s pseudoscience iceberg.

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Skeptical Inquirer magazine: https://www.skepticalinquirer.org

Original article & references: https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/back-inside-the-ufcs-pseudoscience-crisis/

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Bryan Johnson has spent tens of millions of dollars on a highly publicized quest to reverse the aging process. The tech millionaire follows a strict diet and fitness regimen, stacks multiple dietary supplements, obsesses over sleep hygiene, and subjects himself to a litany of medical tests to track his biological data. Harnessing his newfound celebrity, Johnson has become a false authority in the wellness space, touting supplements and alternative therapies and selling his own brand of olive oil.

This article isn’t about Bryan Johnson. Rather, it’s about how Johnson could easily have been the muse for a new longevity initiative recently launched by luxury fitness chain Equinox. Their Optimize program, a lite version of Johnson’s vision, harvests biological data from its clients (via blood tests, fitness and strength assessments, and wearable sensors) and uses it to create personalized fitness and nutrition programs. The program has been described by Equinox as “the definitive approach to health optimization” that’ll “unlock the peaks of human potential.” But priced at $42,000 a year, the program is making headlines for the wrong reasons. Is Equinox’s ultra-premium service worth the membership fee, or is it another cash grab in a wellness industry that’s made longevity its latest plaything?

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Original article & references: https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/health-club-equinox-puts-a-price-on-longevity-just-42000-a-year/

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I was contacted in 2023 by a journalist writing for a major news outlet. In her email—which was written with the terseness that only journalists and famous people seem to get away with—she asked me to comment on a new study that had made a “major breakthrough” in the best time of day to exercise to elicit optimal health. It’s a subject that resurfaces periodically whenever the well of fashionable supplements or celebrity fitness trends runs dry, which it rarely does. I obliged and offered the kind of dispassionate and understated interpretation that scientists love and journalists hate. She didn’t print my response; she didn’t even reply to say thanks. I’ll tell you what I told her.

The Skeptic's Guide to Sports Science BOOK: https://www.nbtiller.com

Skeptical Inquirer magazine: https://www.skepticalinquirer.org

Original article & references: https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/the-best-time-of-day-to-exercise-another-media-fail/

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“If you don’t tell your own story, someone else will tell it for you, and you probably won’t like how they do it.” —Shirley Malcolm, American Association for the Advancement of Science.

We know that complex life likely evolved from single-celled organisms. As soon as microbes emerged from the primordial soup, they were shaped by natural selection, ensuring survival of the fittest. Eventually, though not inevitably, evolution would lead to great complexity. After microbes came the Cambrian explosion—a rapid diversification of complex life. The seas became populated with soft-bodied fish, and after a few billion years, the vertebrates emerged. Bony fish eventually found the sand from the sea. Through intermediate forms, fins produced limbs. Hominids eventually came to rule the Earth with color vision, grasping hands, and brains able to fashion tools such as typewriters and laptops we could use to oversimplify complex scientific phenomena.

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Skeptical Inquirer magazine: https://www.skepticalinquirer.org

Original article & references: https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/from-the-lab-to-the-layperson-a-pioneering-initiative-to-improve-the-translation-of-science/

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