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A low TSH usually means too much thyroid hormone, so a low free T4 next to it looks wrong. What can produce this pattern, from central hypothyroidism to serious illness, medicines and biotin, and what doctors usually check next.
A positive H. pylori result raises two questions: how reliable is the test, and does treating the infection change anything? Randomised trials, mostly in East Asia, give unusually clear answers — with limits worth knowing.
Rapamycin, metformin and TAME, senolytics, klotho. A plain look at the endpoints the human trials actually used — a scan, a marker, a questionnaire, a biopsy — and at what has not been shown in people.
A TSH below the range with normal T4 and T3 often returns to normal on repeat. When it persists, large cohorts link a TSH below 0.1 to atrial fibrillation and fractures, but the one randomised trial of treatment was small and inconclusive.
Near focus fades with age for almost everyone. What reading glasses, multifocal contact lenses, the newer pupil-constricting drops and lens replacement have each been tested on, what the trials measured, and where the trade-offs are.
Skipped or extra beats are usually premature beats. What a basic workup includes, which findings change the picture — burden, heart structure, beats after exercise — and what trials of drugs, ablation and coffee actually measured.
For meniscus and ACL tears, randomised trials, including one against sham surgery, have compared surgery with rehabilitation. What they found, what a meniscal tear on MRI means after 50, and what the trials leave open.
Finding something early is not the same as changing what happens next. Which common screening tests for adults over forty have trial or USPSTF support, which are recommended against, and where the evidence stops.
In most children a flat foot is a shape, not a disease: the arch matures on its own in the first decade. What decides is whether the foot is flexible and whether it hurts. What the insole trials showed, how a rigid foot differs from a flexible one, when surgery is discussed at all, and what to ask the orthopaedic surgeon.
Parents of a child older than seven are told two opposite things: that it is too late, and that a new method changes everything. What the trials in this age group actually found — glasses alone, patching and atropine, binocular games, levodopa — which age ranges regulators authorised and on what data, and what these studies do not say.
Articles in this section are educational and are not medical advice, a diagnosis, or a prescription. Consult a qualified professional before acting on anything you read here.