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Saved by the Barbell is an annual Labor Day fundraiser workout hosted by the CrossFit Foundation and taking place at participating CrossFit affiliates around the world. All proceeds from the workout support school teachers, students, parents, coaches, trainers, and administrators building CrossFit programs in their schools and communities. Registration for Saved by the Barbell 2019 is now live.

This 2018 paper substantiates previous evidence indicating metformin diminishes the beneficial effects of exercise on insulin sensitivity. Metformin is the most widely prescribed medication for the treatment of Type 2 diabetes and more recently has been promoted as a general anti-aging drug. However, this trial’s authors observe that taking metformin alongside exercise inhibits two of the major benefits attributed to exercise (improvements in insulin sensitivity and cardiovascular fitness). They thus suggest recommendations to prescribe metformin broadly as an anti-aging medication are premature, as the drug may accelerate key elements of age-related metabolic degeneration.

"A popular diabetes drug sometimes taken to slow aging may diminish some of the expected health benefits of aerobic exercise in healthy older adults, according to a new report. The drug, metformin, can blunt certain physical changes from exercise that normally help people to age well. The results raise questions about the relationship of pills and physical activity in healthy aging and also whether we know enough about how drugs and exercise interact. The results are particularly disconcerting given that healthy, active people may be considering taking the drug to slow aging. Metformin currently is the most-prescribed medication globally for people with Type 2 diabetes."

In this 2012 trial, seven days on a 400-calorie-per-day diet (VLCD) significantly improved glycemic control in diabetics by resolving impairments in insulin secretion.

This 2017 paper reviews the potential impact of ketogenic diets on cancer via a variety of potential mechanisms. Many of the direct downstream effects of glucose and/or insulin suppression reduce activation of pathways linked to tumor growth and proliferation. Additionally, a ketogenic diet may increase the effectiveness of the immune response to cancer cells.

Dr. Glenn Begley, CEO of BioCurate and a respected hematologist and oncologist, is famous for producing a study in 2012 that demonstrated most preclinical research related to cancer drugs cannot be reproduced. In this lecture, he shares the criteria he used for evaluating the research and the methods he found researchers used to distort their data. He then presents his diagnosis of the problem inherent in the academic research cycle, which he claims fuels the desperation that produces such distortions.

In this October 2018 editorial, Michael Hengartner and Martin Plöderl argue trials investigating the impact of antidepressants show statistically significant but not clinically significant effects, and even these meager effects may be eroded by known biases.

Gary Taubes explains how three decades of controversy over the putative benefits of salt reduction show how the demands of good science clash with the pressures of public health policy.

"In March, the Food and Drug Administration approved a ketamine cousin called esketamine, taken as a nasal spray, for patients with intractable depression. With that, the esketamine nasal spray, under the brand name Spravato, was introduced as a miracle drug—announced in press releases, celebrated on the evening news and embraced by major health care providers like the Department of Veterans Affairs. The problem, critics say, is that the drug’s manufacturer, Janssen, provided the FDA at best modest evidence it worked and then only in limited trials. It presented no information about the safety of Spravato for long-term use beyond 60 weeks. And three patients who received the drug died by suicide during clinical trials, compared with none in the control group, raising red flags Janssen and the FDA dismissed."

In the 1960s and ‘70s, Ancel Keys’ diet-heart and lipid hypotheses gained considerable traction, eventually contributing to the development of unhealthy national nutrition recommendations for low-fat and high-carb diets as well as the growth of the billion-dollar statin industry. There was one big problem, though: Keys was wrong, and increased rates of heart disease and Type 2 diabetes were proof of the gravity of the error. Here, Prof. Tim Noakes provides a review of the literature that had disproved Keys’ hypotheses as early as the ‘50s and ‘60s. He focuses in particular on Dr. Gerald Reaven’s discovery of insulin resistance syndrome and Drs. Margaret Albrink and Evelyn Man’s finding that blood triglyceride concentration is a better predictor of coronary heart disease than blood cholesterol markers.