Nutrition Research, Read Properly
Every statistic here links to the study it came from. When the evidence is preliminary or contested, we say so in the article rather than in a footnote.
Vitamins for Kidney Disease: What's Prescribed and What to Avoid at Every Stage
Vitamins for kidney disease depend on your stage. Before dialysis, on dialysis and after a transplant, care teams prescribe different things, and some vitamins, minerals and herbs clash with kidney medicines. One table puts all three side by side, with the KDOQI and KDIGO guidelines, FDA labels and USDA food numbers behind it, from a dialysis patient.
- Liver disease
Vitamins for Liver Disease: What Helps and What Harms, Stage by Stage
Up to 40% of people in liver clinics take supplements, and supplements are now implicated in more than 16% of cases in the Drug Induced Liver Injury Network. Yet in cirrhosis, zinc and vitamin D often run low. Here's what US and European guidelines and NIH's LiverTox say about vitamins for liver disease, side by side for fatty liver, compensated and decompensated cirrhosis.
- Heart failure
Vitamins for Heart Failure: What Your Medicines Change
The right vitamins for heart failure depend on your pills more than your diagnosis. A potassium top-up the furosemide label says may be needed is a named risk on the spironolactone, lisinopril and Entresto labels. Here is what the FDA labels, the 2022 US guideline and the main trials say about potassium, magnesium, iron, CoQ10, fish oil and salt substitutes, drug class by drug class.
- Diabetes
Vitamins for Diabetics: What to Take, What to Test, and What Clashes With Your Meds
Vitamins for diabetics, organized by the medicine you take. The ADA says supplements bring no benefit without a deficiency, yet metformin can lower vitamin B12, chromium can stack with insulin, and high-dose niacin can raise blood sugar. Here is what the drug labels and guidelines say, with USDA food numbers.
- Kidney disease
When to Take Phosphate Binders, and What to Keep Away From Them
When to take phosphate binders has a short answer: with meals. The harder question is what to keep away from them. On dialysis, binders can be half of a 19-pill day, and their FDA labels name antibiotics, thyroid medicine and iron that need space. Here's what each label says, binder by binder, from a dialysis patient who got it wrong for months.
- Food scanners
Food Nutrition Apps: What That Score Out of 100 Is Actually Made Of
The Nutrition Facts panel is required to carry four micronutrients out of the 27 the same regulation calls essential in human nutrition. Every food nutrition app that scans a barcode builds on that panel and an ingredient list. And Yuka's score, the one method in this category published in full, is 60% nutrition, 30% additives and 10% an organic bonus. Here's what that single number can and can't carry.
- Nutrition apps
Nutrition Apps Compared: What Each One Can Actually Count
MyFitnessPal counts six micronutrients, the pre-2016 US Nutrition Facts label set, and vitamin D isn't among them. Cronometer counts up to 95. Here are the main nutrition apps compared on what they can count, where their numbers come from, and what sits behind the subscription, including where our own app is the wrong choice.
- GLP-1
GLP-1 Hair Loss: What the Drug Labels Say, and Why Biotin Is the Wrong Answer
GLP-1 hair loss is a counted adverse reaction on the Zepbound and Wegovy labels: 5.8% at Wegovy's maximum dose, and 8.4% of women in that trial. Both labels associate it with weight reduction rather than a nutrient shortfall. Here's why biotin is the wrong answer, and what's worth doing instead.
- GLP-1
GLP-1 Nutrient Deficiency: What 461,382 Patient Records Actually Show
GLP-1 nutrient deficiency, by the numbers: in a peer-reviewed analysis of 461,382 adults, 22.4% had a nutritional deficiency diagnosed within a year of starting a GLP-1. Vitamin D led, protein is the bigger gap, and the hair-loss evidence points somewhere other than vitamins.
- Calorie tracking
How Accurate Are AI Calorie Apps? What the NIH Found When It Weighed the Food
How accurate are AI calorie apps? NIH researchers weighed 102 meals to a tenth of a gram and compared them against four popular calorie apps. Measured one by one, the apps ran between roughly 250 and 345 calories short per meal. Here's why photo tracking misses, and how to correct for it.