Tag: Health studies

According to extensive research, coffee consumption has been linked to lower levels of liver enzymes, suggesting improved liver function. This relationship naturally raises the question: does coffee affect albumin levels, a key protein synthesized in the liver?

Millions of health articles are published annually, with randomized controlled trials (RCTs) sitting atop the evidence hierarchy for assessing interventions. The reason randomized controlled trials are considered the gold standard of nutrition research is their unique ability to reduce bias and provide the strongest evidence for cause-and-effect relationships between dietary interventions and health outcomes.

Research from the Adventist Health Study-2 showed vegetarian men living over 9 years longer and women over 6 years longer than their meat-eating Californian counterparts. However, the question of whether a vegetarian diet itself is the sole cause of increased longevity is complex and depends heavily on other lifestyle factors.

According to a 2019 meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials, habitually skipping breakfast may actually result in a small weight loss of around one pound over several weeks, directly challenging the long-held belief that a morning meal is essential for weight control. This conflicting study evidence has fueled a significant debate about whether you should eat breakfast or not.

Food Frequency Questionnaires (FFQs) have been widely used in large-scale studies of nutrition and health since at least the 1980s, providing a crucial, low-cost method for estimating dietary intake over long periods. Despite the availability of other methods like 24-hour recalls, the FFQ's specific strengths offer significant benefits for capturing habitual eating patterns.

Launched in the mid-1980s, the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) study embarked on a multi-decade research mission, which has since led to a common misconception about the "Cardia diet". This article clarifies that the Cardia diet is not a meal plan but rather the dietary history questionnaire used by researchers to collect data, contributing to our understanding of heart health over a lifetime.

According to the National Institutes of Health, dietary fiber intake has significantly decreased over the last few centuries in many populations. This shift has led to the emergence of a key question in nutritional science, providing a perfect example of a nutrition hypothesis: does increased dietary fiber intake improve markers of gut health in adults with low fiber consumption?.

Despite the widespread popularity of multivitamins, with over a third of American adults using them, decades of large-scale scientific studies have consistently shown little to no health benefit for the average person. Is there any scientific evidence that multivitamins work, or is it mostly marketing hype? This article explores the research to provide a clear, evidence-based answer.

According to research published by the European Food Information Council (EUFIC), the design of a study is the most crucial element in determining the quality of evidence. Therefore, when evaluating a nutritional study, the least important factor is often considered to be the number of researchers involved in the study, as it does not directly correlate with scientific validity.

Food Frequency Questionnaires (FFQs) are a cornerstone of large-scale nutritional epidemiology studies, providing long-term dietary data to investigate links between diet and disease. Knowing how to use FFQ is therefore essential for anyone involved in health research or monitoring their eating patterns over time.