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Dr. Malcolm Kendrick revisits the response to injury hypothesis as an alternative to the cholesterol hypothesis for explaining the etiology of atherosclerosis. He evaluates three “facts” used to support the cholesterol hypothesis — 1. fatty streaks are early-stage plaques, 2. there is a high concentration of cholesterol in plaques, which must have been derived from LDL, and 3. the lipoprotein found in plaques is LDL — and finds they are all overly simplified or false.

“It is interesting that I had to venture out of the academic realm to find something so profoundly scientific. Here we have, at long last, a definition founded on something measurable, repeatable and evidence based—the ability to perform work per unit time; i.e., the ability to produce and sustain power.”

For years, CrossFit, Inc. has worked to expose the various levels of corruption compromising the integrity of America’s public health agencies. Last year, CrossFit demonstrated the foundations for the CDC and NIH had failed to disclose donations from corporations including Coca-Cola and Pepsi, leading to a formal reprimand of both agencies by Congress. Most recently, evidence brought to light by CrossFit appeared in a letter several U.S. representatives wrote to the Office of the Inspector General demanding that it conduct an investigation into the Department of Health and Human Services, the CDC and NIH’s parent agency, for failing to respond to Congress’ inquiries. The evidence demonstrates the long history of the CDC and NIH’s prioritization of industry partnerships over their charter to protect the American public.

The final workout of the 2020 CrossFit Open was a triplet of muscle-ups, wall balls, and rowing for calories. For the first time in Open history, the final workout didn’t contain thrusters. Athletes were allowed to partition the reps any way they’d like, which introduced a strategic element. Based on performance by country, Spain had the highest percentage of athletes who finished the workout (17 percent) as well as the highest percentage of athletes with at least some muscle-ups (51 percent). Here are some of the key stats from 20.5 from CrossFit Beyond the Whiteboard.

This 2015 review hypothesizes how insulin resistance develops in the brain and cerebral insulin resistance contributes to neurological and metabolic disease. The authors argue brain insulin resistance is both a consequence and cause of metabolic distress, and impaired brain insulin signaling can account for both the difficulty of reversing obesity and some of its neurological and metabolic comorbidities.

In this 2012 article, Gary Taubes and Cristin Kearns Couzens review the history of the sugar industry’s attempts to dismiss or conceal the troubling health claims linking their products to rising rates of diabetes, heart disease, and other chronic diseases. In a “decades-long effort to stack the scientific deck,” the Sugar Association, its spin-off International Sugar Research Foundation, and “contributing research members” from companies such as Coca-Cola, Hershey’s, and Nabisco poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into research grants and studies designed, as internal documents put it, “to maintain research as a main prop of the industry’s defense.” As the authors describe, these efforts — and an extensive series of public relations campaigns — rewarded the sugar industry with a profound degree of influence over nutrition guidelines, the official recommendations of groups such as the American Diabetes Association, and the general public’s understanding of nutrition.

Prof. Timothy Noakes explicates the most persuasive critiques of Ancel Keys’ claim that dietary fat causes coronary heart disease. First among these is one by two of Keys’ contemporaries, Jacob Yerushalmy and Herman Hilleboe, who warned, "No matter how plausible such an association may appear, it is not in itself proof of a cause-effect relationship. ... But quotation and repetition of the suggestive association soon creates the impression that the relationship is truly valid, and ultimately it acquires status as a supporting link in a chain of presumed proof." Noakes claims quotation and repetition became the hallmark of the method by which Keys convinced the world his hypothesis was the singular truth, thereby altering the trajectory of 70 years of medical practice and dietary guidelines and contributing to the global obesity epidemic.

In the final installment in his series on pathological science, Gary Taubes claims institutionalized skepticism is a necessary trait in any legitimate scientific field. He brings this claim to bear on modern research on nutrition and chronic disease and notes a tendency to act on poorly formed or ineffectively tested hypotheses. Scientists who call for the implementation of such hypotheses ask for trust without having performed the rigorous research necessary to earn it, Taubes claims, and when this practice becomes the norm, an entire field of research can become pathological. “A healthy scientific enterprise allows for no shortcuts,” he writes.

Individuals on low-carbohydrate diets have lower levels of ingested glucose and smaller liver and muscle glycogen stores. In this 2016 trial, endurance athletes following a low-carbohydrate diet were shown to maintain energy sufficiency during exercise through increased reliance on fat oxidation.

"In recent years, hospitals and medical centers across the country have stopped selling sugar-sweetened beverages in an effort to reduce obesity and diabetes. Now a new study carried out at the University of California, San Francisco, has documented the health impact of a soda sales ban on its employees. Ten months after a sales ban went into effect, U.C.S.F. workers who tended to drink a lot of sugary beverages had cut their daily intake by about half. By the end of the study period, the group had, on average, reduced their waist sizes and belly fat, though they did not see any changes in their body mass index. Those who cut back on sugary beverages also tended to see improvements in insulin resistance, a risk factor for Type 2 diabetes."