Health & Evidence Library
Guides to skin, joint, bone, tendon, back, and eye concerns with emphasis on function, red flags, and appropriate testing.
86 guides · Page 1 of 2
How to tell viral, bacterial, and allergic pink eye apart, what antibiotic drops really do, and the red-eye warning signs that need urgent care.
The 2026 WADA Prohibited List classifies banned substances and methods, but safe medication decisions require more than a name search.
SPF is a standardized sunburn-protection ratio, not a timer or a complete measure of UVA protection. Learn how labeling, amount, and reapplication matter.
FRAX estimates 10-year hip and major osteoporotic fracture probability. Learn what goes into the estimate, what it omits, and how thresholds differ.
Clinically proven is a claim, not a study design. Learn how to check the exact product, outcome, comparator, trial quality, effect size, harms, and regulation.
Sham-controlled vertebroplasty trials show why procedure studies need credible placebos, careful fracture timing, and outcomes beyond pain improvement alone.
Learn why the USPSTF recommends sun-protection counseling through age 24 for fair skin types and selectively offers it later in adulthood.
Gout guidelines support titration using serial serum urate, usually toward less than 6 mg/dL, while risks and disease severity shape care.
Training creates a signal, while recovery permits adaptation. Learn how specificity, progression, fatigue, muscle, tendon, and aerobic systems interact.
Trials support modest improvement in several signs of facial photodamage with topical tretinoin, alongside common irritation and clear limits.
A two-year trial of triamcinolone every three months found greater cartilage loss and no sustained pain advantage over saline, with limits on interpretation.
How retinal, optic-nerve, vascular, and inflammatory findings can prompt broader health evaluation without replacing confirmatory testing.
A melanoma biopsy establishes diagnosis and primary-tumor features such as Breslow thickness and ulceration, but nodes and distant spread complete staging.
Weekend warrior activity is linked with health benefits similar to activity spread across the week when total weekly volume is comparable.
Teledermatology can expand access, but accuracy depends on the question, images, history, and reference standard. Learn how to read concordance and cancer data.
Maximal-use trials detected sunscreen ingredients in blood. Detection triggers further safety testing; it does not by itself demonstrate clinical harm.
Skin cancer occurs in every skin tone. Learn how patterns, warning signs, diagnostic delay, and evidence limits differ in darker skin.
Sentinel node biopsy stages melanoma. Learn what MSLT-I and MSLT-II showed about prognosis, completion dissection, survival, and lymphedema.
An evidence-based map from rosacea features to skin care, topical and oral therapies, procedures, and ocular or phymatous referral.
REDs is a multisystem syndrome linked to problematic low energy availability. Learn the signs, assessment limits, risk model, and recovery principles.
Why psoriasis is associated with cardiovascular disease, what causal studies can and cannot show, and how guidelines approach risk screening.
What randomized trials and recent meta-analyses show about PRP for pattern hair loss, including heterogeneity, protocol variation, and safety gaps.
A whole-life guide to eye exams, vision changes, injury prevention, contact-lens safety, and urgent warning signs.
What glaucoma is, how risk and eye pressure are assessed, what screening evidence says, and how progression is monitored.
A practical, evidence-based guide to dry eye, screen-related discomfort, blinking, work setup, contact-lens safety, and warning signs.
A practical guide to cataract symptoms, diagnosis, timing of surgery, lens decisions, recovery, and warning signs.
Studies found wide and sometimes unsafe variation in melanoma-app accuracy. Learn why version, setting, reference standard, and intended use matter.
How the 2019 ACR/Arthritis Foundation osteoarthritis guideline ranks exercise and weight loss above glucosamine and fish oil, and why.
A plain-language guide to the 2021 ACR rheumatoid arthritis guideline: how graded evidence keeps methotrexate first, sets a disease target, and limits steroids.
Large randomized trials (BEEP and PreventADALL) found daily infant moisturizer did not prevent eczema and may raise skin infection risk.
The 2024 AAD eczema guideline gives dupilumab, tralokinumab and oral JAK inhibitors one strong recommendation. That grade is not a safety ranking.
A New England Journal of Medicine trial compared four field therapies for actinic keratosis and one cream came out ahead at one year.
How a 17-member panel rated 270 clinical scenarios to turn skin-cancer evidence into consistent decisions about when Mohs surgery is worth it.
A USPSTF grade I on skin cancer screening means the evidence is insufficient to weigh benefits and harms, not that screening was shown to fail.
Large meta-analyses find no isotretinoin link to depression or bowel disease; teratogenicity, not mood, is the real reason iPLEDGE exists.
FDA law recognizes cosmetics and drugs, not cosmeceuticals. A single structure or function claim can push a skincare product across the drug line.
A plain-language guide to reading the evidence behind cosmetic procedures, using glabellar-line botulinum toxin as the worked example.
Why tendinopathy care shifted from rest toward heavy-slow-resistance and eccentric loading, and how strong that evidence really is.
Why stopping denosumab without a follow-on drug lets bone turnover rebound and vertebral fractures cluster, and what FREEDOM data and guidelines advise.
A plain-language guide to what FDA authorization of the first AI skin cancer device proves, and how to read its sensitivity, NPV, and specificity.
A plain-language guide to how the 2024 AAD acne guidelines grade benzoyl peroxide, retinoids and combinations, and why topical antibiotics are never used alone.
A cited walk through the randomized trials on platelet-rich plasma for tennis elbow, and why timing and preparation change the verdict.
In 2026 Medicare begins paying for a standardized physical activity assessment. Here is what treating movement as a routine clinical measure really means.
How guidelines and classification criteria separate osteoarthritis from inflammatory arthritis using stiffness, symmetry, and inflammatory markers
What sham-controlled trials found when knee arthroscopy for a degenerative meniscus tear was tested against placebo surgery, and the lessons for evidence.
Rising melanoma diagnoses alongside a flat death rate suggest overdiagnosis, driven by more biopsies and thin, in situ lesions rather than more lethal disease.
How sports scientists grade ergogenic-aid claims, and why only a few substances like creatine and dietary nitrate have real support.
A practical framework for reading the evidence behind a cosmetic procedure: legal category, study design, outcome durability, and harms reporting.
A plain-language look at how the 2025 USPSTF osteoporosis statement uses DXA, FRAX, and treatment trials to reach a B recommendation.
What the evidence says about how well the ABCDE rule and dermoscopy catch melanoma, and why the user matters more than the tool.
How the ultrasound halo sign performs in giant cell arteritis and why same-day scanning clinics are linked to less permanent sight loss.
How the 2026 ACSM resistance-training position stand grades exercise evidence and turns it into consistency-over-complexity conclusions.
Why gout flares are an immune reaction to urate crystals, and why the ACR 2020 guideline treats serum urate to below 6 mg/dL rather than treating flares alone.
How the 2023 BJSM umbrella review pooled 97 systematic reviews to estimate medium effects of physical activity on depression and anxiety.
Sunscreen blocks the UVB that makes vitamin D in a lab dish, yet population data show little clinically meaningful deficiency. Here is why.
A close read of the Nambour trial, the only randomized study with a melanoma endpoint, and what its confidence intervals can and cannot support.
A close reading of the 2017 ISSN position stand on creatine: strong evidence for performance and safety, weaker signals for clinical and neuroprotective use.
In US law a product is a cosmetic or a drug based on what it claims to do, and that claim sets the evidence it must carry.
How WADA's 2026 List draws method M1.4, banning carbon monoxide used to build blood while leaving diagnostic rebreathing that measures hemoglobin mass allowed.
A reader's guide to the 2021 ISSN caffeine position stand: which claims are load-bearing, which are hedged, and why averages predict little per person.