The internet knows a lot about health—but it doesn’t know you.

Even excellent research can obscure when people don't fit the pattern.

What helps most other people may be ineffective—or harmful—for you.

Read the science, then bring better questions to a healthcare provider who can see the whole picture.

My blog posts always include a caveat: Ask your healthcare provider before following this advice. That isn’t just a skip-over disclaimer or the grown-up version of “Don’t try this at home.” I mean it sincerely: Don’t change your health behaviors just yet.

What Scientific Articles Do and Do Not Do

The information in this blog is important. I spend weeks verifying science in every post, reading journal articles, and sometimes including co-authors with expertise on the topic.

An effective healthcare recommendation for any individual, however, should be individualized. Healthcare needs to consider your particular circumstances, not what’s right for the norm. Mr. Rogers was right: You are special.

The best medical and psychological research identifies patterns among different behaviors and physical health (in scientific lingo: associations between variables). Any given study may include a large range of people and well-designed comparisons.

But no one participant is likely to be your age, your sex, have your social activity, and also share your life history. Some studies exclude people based on medical conditions or health behaviors. Other studies took place in one location that differs from yours in terms of weather patterns, traffic, or environmental toxins.

Here’s a hypothetical study. My students often get sluggish and can’t pay attention after lunch. Imagine an intervention to improve their attention in my afternoon seminar. I........

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