Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Shingles and the Shingrix Vaccine: Who Should Get It
Who should get the Shingrix shingles vaccine, how well it works, and its side effects, based on current CDC and ACIP recommendations.
Health & Evidence Library
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Practical evidence guides to prevention, nutrition, physical activity, immunization, screening, and preparation for travel.
77 guides · Page 1 of 2
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
What the Trials Actually Show About Intensive Behavioral Weight Loss Programs
Intensive programs produce modest average weight loss, improve diabetes risk in selected groups, and require maintenance rather than a short course.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
What the 2024 Falls Prevention Update Changed, and Why Vitamin D Was Dropped
The 2024 USPSTF update kept exercise and selective multifactorial care while moving vitamin D into a separate prevention review.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
What Decision Aids Do and What They Cannot Do
Patient decision aids improve knowledge and clarify values, but cannot choose for someone, guarantee outcomes, or replace clinical conversation.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Weight and Metabolic Health: What the Measures Mean
Weight is one health measure, not a complete diagnosis. Learn how BMI, waist size, blood pressure, glucose, lipids, function, and context fit together.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Vitamin D and Calcium for Fractures: The Evidence
Routine vitamin D or calcium supplements prevent few or no fractures in most community adults. Learn what trials show and which clinical groups are different.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Visceral Fat and Metabolic Risk: What We Can Measure
Visceral fat surrounds abdominal organs and tracks cardiometabolic risk. Learn what waist size, imaging, BMI, and laboratory markers can and cannot show.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Understanding Your Lipid Panel in 2026
Learn what LDL-C, HDL-C, triglycerides, non-HDL-C, apoB, and lipoprotein(a) measure, and why a lipid panel must be read with overall risk.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Understanding Cardiovascular Risk Scores
Cardiovascular risk scores estimate group-based probability over a stated horizon; the equation, outcome, population, and clinical context determine meaning.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Why Sleep and Stress Can Change Blood Sugar
How sleep loss, circadian disruption, acute stress, illness, behavior, and diabetes burden can influence glucose without a simple one-way cause.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Why Single-Disease Guidelines Struggle With Multimorbidity
How guideline stacking creates interactions and treatment burden, and how NICE NG56 reframes care around goals, benefit, harm, and coordination.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Why Pneumococcal Vaccination Now Starts at Fifty
Why CDC lowered routine adult pneumococcal vaccination from age 65 to 50 and how the current vaccine pathways fit together.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Why Lifestyle Counseling Receives Different USPSTF Grades
Why related diet and physical-activity counseling earns a B grade with cardiovascular risk factors and a C grade without them.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Why HIV Screening Is Recommended Once for Almost Every Adult
Why routine HIV screening uses broad age ranges, when repeat testing is needed, and how the antigen-antibody and confirmatory sequence works.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Why Hepatitis C Screening Became a One-Time Test for Nearly All Adults
Why U.S. guidance expanded beyond the baby-boomer birth cohort, how antibody and RNA testing differ, and who needs repeat testing.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Why Adult RSV Vaccine Advice Changed From Choice to Age and Risk
How adult RSV recommendations changed from broad shared decisions to clearer age- and risk-based rules, including the 2025 age expansion.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
The Science of Vitality and Energy
Fatigue is not one biological deficit. Sleep, mood, medicines, iron, thyroid function, and chronic illness can all shape how energy feels.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
The Biology of Weight Regulation, Explained
Body weight reflects dynamic feedback among brain circuits, hormones, energy expenditure, genes, medicines, sleep, food access, and environment.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Supplements: What Helps, What Is Hype, and What Can Harm
An evidence-first guide to supplement benefits, uncertain claims, interactions, contamination, dosing, and safer decisions.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Supplement Contamination and Inadvertent Doping Risk
A supplement label may not match its contents. Learn how strict liability, prohibited lists, batch testing, and documentation shape athlete risk.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Sleep as a Foundation of Health: More Than Hours
Healthy sleep includes duration, regularity, timing, continuity, daytime function, and freedom from sleep disorders, not just hours in bed.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Sick Days and Diabetes: Why a Plan Made in Advance Matters
Illness can raise or lower glucose and increase dehydration, ketone, and medication risks. A written diabetes sick-day plan makes the response safer.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Questions to Bring to a Diabetes Appointment
A practical guide to preparing for a diabetes visit and asking about glucose goals, medicines, complications, technology, prevention, and barriers to care.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Intermittent Fasting and the Evidence: A Trial-by-Trial Reading Guide
What randomized trials show about time-restricted eating, weight, and glucose, why study designs differ, and where safety planning matters.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Hydration and Salt: Separating Fact from Myth
How water needs, thirst, food moisture, sodium guidance, heat, exercise, and medical conditions change sensible hydration choices.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Dietary Patterns and Metabolic Health: How to Read the Evidence
A practical evidence guide to dietary patterns, metabolic outcomes, study limitations, personalization, and safety considerations.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Diabetes and Foot Health: A Risk-Based Guide to Prevention and Early Response
How neuropathy, circulation, pressure, and prior ulcers shape diabetes-related foot risk, with a clear framework for checks and escalation.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Diabetes and Eye Health: What Screening Can Find Before Vision Changes
A plain-language guide to diabetic retinopathy, macular edema, screening, urgent symptoms, and the evidence behind early detection.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Diabetes and Aging: A Framework for Safer, Individualized Care
How health status, hypoglycemia risk, function, cognition, treatment burden, nutrition, and personal priorities shape diabetes care in later life.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Blood Pressure and Diabetes: Reading Risk Across the Heart, Kidneys, Eyes, and Feet
How blood pressure changes cardiovascular and microvascular risk in diabetes, what accurate measurement shows, and why organ checks matter.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Why One-Time Aneurysm Screening Targets Older Men Who Ever Smoked
How the USPSTF anchored its grade B abdominal aortic aneurysm screening to older men who ever smoked, and why women and nonsmokers fall lower.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
The Evidence Behind HPV Self-Collection for Cervical Cancer Screening
Why concordance and accuracy studies convinced guideline panels to list a patient-collected swab as an acceptable way to start HPV-based cervical screening.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Metabolic Syndrome: Reading a Cluster of Risk, Not a Diagnosis
What metabolic syndrome measures, why five risk factors cluster, and why the label is an early warning you can still act on rather than a verdict.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Hypoglycemia Explained: What Low Blood Sugar Is and Why It Deserves Calm Respect
Hypoglycemia is when blood sugar drops too low. Learn the early signs, why it happens, and why a personal plan with your clinician matters.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
How to Talk About Uncertainty With Patients
Honest, practical ways to communicate medical uncertainty without undermining trust, for clinicians and the patients they serve.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
How to Read the Adult Immunization Schedule Without Getting Lost
A plain-language guide to the colors, the age and condition columns, and the shared-decision rows on the CDC adult vaccine schedule.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
How to Explain Diabetes Risk to a Patient Without Scaring Them
Give diabetes risk as a plain number out of 100, separate what a patient can change from what they cannot, and end on one decision.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
How to Evaluate a Wellness Claim: A Calm, Practical Framework
A practical framework for judging any wellness claim, separating real evidence from testimonials and marketing.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
How to Evaluate a Weight-Loss Program or Claim Fairly
An evidence-based way to judge weight-loss programs and claims, the marketing patterns to watch for, and how to choose without self-blame.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
How to Evaluate a Supplement or Wellness Claim Without Getting Fooled
A reader's checklist for supplement and wellness claims: how they are regulated, what evidence counts, and the marketing red flags to watch.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
How the Preventive Services Task Force Stays Independent, and What It Deliberately Leaves Out
How the USPSTF uses volunteer experts, continuous conflict disclosure, and cost-blind grading to stay a trusted evidence authority in prevention.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
How Supplement Law Works: The DSHEA Premarket Gap
Why supplements reach the market without FDA premarket approval under DSHEA, and what the FDA disclaimer really signals.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
How Quitting Tobacco Became One of the Few Grade A Preventive Services
Why tobacco cessation earned a USPSTF Grade A while pharmacotherapy in pregnancy stayed an I statement, and how the grading system works.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
How GLP-1 Based Medicines Support Weight Management
How GLP-1 based medicines borrow the body's own appetite and satiety signals to support weight management, explained in plain terms.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
How ACIP Turns Vaccine Evidence Into a Recommendation
How ACIP uses GRADE and the Evidence to Recommendations framework to weigh benefits, harms, values, cost and equity before voting on a vaccine.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
How a USPSTF Letter Grade Is Actually Decided
A, B, C, D, or I is not one score but two judgments crossed together: how sure the evidence is, and how much good the service does.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
How a Few Minutes of Alcohol Counseling Earned a B Grade, and Why It Stops at Adolescents
Why USPSTF gives adult alcohol screening plus brief counseling a B grade but rates the same service in teens an I statement.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Fatty Liver and Type 2 Diabetes: A Two-Way Loop That Often Improves
Fatty liver and type 2 diabetes reinforce each other, usually without symptoms, yet the liver can genuinely recover with steady, unhurried care.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Does Sugar Cause Diabetes? A Fair, Calm Answer
Sugar alone does not cause diabetes. Here is the honest relationship, the type 1 and type 2 difference, and why weight and energy balance matter more.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Does a Weight-Loss Drug Prevent Heart Attacks? Reading the SELECT Trial
What the SELECT trial did and did not show about weekly semaglutide, heart attacks, and strokes in people with obesity and prior heart disease but no diabetes.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Diabetes and Vaccines: A Practical Guide to Staying Ahead of Infection
Why vaccines carry a little extra weight when you live with diabetes, and how to fold them into routine care. Educational.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Diabetes and Sleep Apnea: A Two-Way Link Worth Asking About
Sleep apnea and high blood sugar feed each other, the link often goes unnoticed, and your sleep is a fair thing to raise at a checkup.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Diabetes and Planning a Pregnancy: Why the Months Before Matter
With type 1 or type 2 diabetes, blood glucose in the months before conception helps shape early development. Why preconception planning matters.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Diabetes and Nerve Health: Early Signs and Why Steady Blood Sugar Protects Your Nerves
How diabetes affects nerves, the early signs to notice in the feet, and why steady blood sugar plus simple checks help protect feeling and function.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Diabetes and Mental Health: The Emotional Weight Few People Talk About
Why diabetes carries a real mental and emotional load, what diabetes distress is, and why caring for your feelings is part of good care.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Diabetes and Kidney Health: Why Early Checks Catch What Symptoms Miss
How diabetes affects the kidneys, why early changes cause no symptoms, and why two simple tests catch them while there is still room to act.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Diabetes and Exercise: Why Movement Helps Your Blood Sugar
How regular movement lowers blood sugar and improves health in diabetes, and why even small, steady activity counts.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Diabetes and Dental Health: Why the Mouth and Blood Sugar Affect Each Other
Diabetes and gum health influence each other in both directions, which is why dental care belongs inside a diabetes plan rather than beside it.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Common Myths About Type 2 Diabetes, Gently Corrected
The most common myths about type 2 diabetes, sorted from truth, so sugar, body size, willpower, and insulin stop carrying unfair blame.
Prevention, nutrition, and travel health
Brown Fat and Metabolism: The Tissue That Burns Energy to Make Heat
What brown fat is, how it makes heat with UCP1, and what the evidence honestly shows about its role in metabolism.