In partnership with
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The Reset Series™
Vitae Weekly Reset — Issue #42
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On the Gap Between a Measurement and a Result
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Three of this week’s four pieces share a problem: something measurable changed, but the headline conclusion doesn’t necessarily follow from it.
Creatine increased lean tissue in middle-aged adults who weren’t following a structured exercise programme, but lean tissue on a DXA scan includes water, and creatine draws water into muscle. Sodium bicarbonate reliably shifts blood bicarbonate, pH and lactate in swimmers, yet their 200m times didn’t significantly improve. And twenty people with depression cut ultra-processed food and felt better, in a trial nobody could blind and which was designed to test whether the experiment was possible at all.
The fourth is a different kind of gap. Electric cars really can make susceptible passengers queasy through strong regenerative braking, but that is a long way from showing that EVs as a category make people more carsick than petrol ones.
— The Vitae Team
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This week on the Vitae blog
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Does Creatine Work If You Don’t Exercise?
A new trial found creatine increased lean tissue without training. But lean mass isn’t necessarily the same as building new muscle.
Read →
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Does Cutting Ultra-Processed Food Help Depression?
A small trial found depression improved after people cut ultra-processed food. Intriguing, but not yet proof that UPF was the cause.
Read →
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Does Bicarbonate of Soda Really Improve Endurance?
Bicarbonate can improve intense exercise, but its benefits are small, inconsistent and concentrated in a surprisingly narrow performance window.
Read →
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Why Do Electric Cars Make Some People Feel Sick?
Some passengers feel unusually sick in electric cars. Research suggests regenerative braking and unfamiliar motion cues may explain why.
Read →
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Most Men Notice Aging All at Once
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This week’s deep dive
Does Creatine Work If You Don’t Exercise?
Much of creatine’s reputation rests on what happens when you combine it with training. A new 12-week trial from Texas A&M asked a different question: what if you take it and don’t?
Sixty-four adults aged 45 to 65 completed the study. Those taking 10g a day who hadn’t joined the exercise programme gained an average 1.1kg of lean tissue from baseline, while the equivalent placebo group showed no meaningful increase. They also improved on leg press, bench press and time to exhaustion.
Then there is what lean tissue means. DXA scans count everything that isn’t fat or bone as lean, water included, and creatine’s known effect is to draw water into muscle cells. The study couldn’t separate the two, so “gained 1.1kg of muscle” claims more than was measured.
That isn’t the only reason to read the numbers carefully, and the confidence interval, the way participants were allocated and who supplied the creatine all change the picture.
Read the full piece →
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Quick wins for this week
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Treat “lean mass” as a measurement, not a muscle count
DXA counts water as lean tissue, which matters for anything that changes muscle water.
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Don’t try bicarbonate for the first time on race day
Research doses are large, and gastrointestinal symptoms are common.
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Cutting ultra-processed food is reasonable on its own terms
Just not as a treatment for depression, and not instead of one.
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If an EV makes a passenger queasy, try a gentler regen setting
Where the car allows it. The evidence is thin, so treat it as an experiment.
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There is a particular move that turns a modest study into a headline, and three of this week’s pieces show it from different angles.
A scan measures lean tissue, and the write-up calls it muscle. A blood test confirms that a supplement changed the physiology it was expected to change, and the coverage treats that as proof it makes athletes faster. Twenty people with depression feel better after substantially reducing ultra-processed food, and the finding becomes a dietary treatment.
In each case, the underlying research is more careful. The distinction between what was measured and what can reasonably be concluded from it is often where the story is.
The Vitae Team
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Get Ahead of Aging Before It Gets You
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