In partnership with
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The Reset Series™
Vitae Weekly Reset — Issue #46
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The things we blame ourselves for
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Most of us carry a private list of the things we think we are doing to our health. The late nights. The long hours. The burnt bits on the roast potatoes. The year that was far more stressful than it should have been.
And if something serious goes wrong, that list is the first place we look.
This week, we’ve been looking at two familiar concerns: whether stress can cause cancer, and whether eating burnt food is as dangerous as we’re sometimes led to believe. The answers are more reassuring than you might expect, although the science is messier than the headlines suggest.
We’ve also looked at what happens when people work four days instead of five, and why creatine can make the scales move before you’ve gained any meaningful muscle. There’s quite a lot to get into.
— The Vitae Team
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This week on the Vitae blog
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Does Stress Cause Cancer?
It’s a worry many people carry, particularly after a difficult period in their lives. But the latest large-scale research hasn’t established that psychological stress directly causes cancer. We look at what the studies found, and why smoking makes some of the results harder to interpret.
Read the article →
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Does Eating Burnt Food Cause Cancer?
We’ve all scraped the black bits off a piece of toast. But does eating them raise your cancer risk? The evidence is less clear than you might think, partly because researchers rarely know how thoroughly people cooked their food.
Read the article →
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Does a Four-Day Week Reduce Stress?
When nearly 3,000 employees moved to a shorter working week, burnout fell and sleep improved. The interesting question is whether that came from working fewer hours, changing how work was organised, or a combination of both.
Read the article →
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Does Creatine Cause Weight Gain?
If you’ve started taking creatine and noticed the scales creeping up, there’s a good chance it’s not what you think. We look at why weight can change early on, and what the research says about water, muscle and fat.
Read the article →
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Men, You've Been Misinformed
Men's skin is about 25% thicker than women's, but thicker skin doesn't mean better aging. It means delayed collapse. For years, your skin looks resilient. Then collagen declines, and when it does, it drops hard: deeper wrinkles, heavier under-eye bags, more dark spots showing up all at once.
Most men were never taught to get ahead of this. Women were. And by the time the signs show up, you're playing catch-up.
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This week’s deep dive
A fresh look at stress
We’ve given The Stress Reset a complete rewrite.
One of the things that became clear while revisiting the research was how much stress advice focuses on helping us tolerate difficult circumstances, rather than doing anything about the circumstances themselves.
There’s nothing wrong with breathing exercises, going for a walk or trying to sleep better. They can all be helpful. But if you’re overloaded at work, caring for someone, or constantly trying to fit too much into the day, another relaxation technique isn’t necessarily what you need most.
Sometimes the more useful question is what can come off your plate.
That’s the thinking behind the new Stress Reset. It’s a practical guide built around a four-week plan that starts with the pressures you might be able to change, before looking at ways to manage those you can’t.
We’ve also revisited some of the claims around breathwork. The research is interesting, but particular techniques haven’t always performed better than simpler comparison exercises. You don’t need to master a complicated breathing routine to begin looking after yourself.
And if you read our four-day-week article this week, you’ll recognise some of the same ideas. Less unnecessary work, clearer priorities and more time to recover may be worth pursuing long before anyone agrees to give you Fridays off.
Explore The Stress Reset →
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Three things for the week ahead
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Don’t worry about the burnt toast
The Food Standards Agency recommends cooking toast and potatoes to a golden-yellow colour rather than letting them get too dark. It’s a sensible precaution, but an occasionally overdone breakfast isn’t a reason to panic.
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You can keep potatoes in the fridge
Remember being told not to? The guidance has changed. The FSA now says keeping raw potatoes in the fridge at home doesn’t materially increase their potential to form acrylamide when cooked. So choose the storage method that works best and avoids waste.
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Try taking something off the list
Before companies introduced a four-day week, they spent eight weeks looking at how work was organised. Fewer meetings, less unnecessary work and more uninterrupted time were part of the preparation. You don’t need a new working contract to start a conversation about any of those.
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1,000,000 Men Use This. You Probably Know One.
Most men don't think about their skin until eye bags, dark spots, and wrinkles show up at once. Particle Face Cream is a groundbreaking men's formula that fights all three, while also restoring firmness and hydrating deeply. No complicated routine. Trusted by over a million men. 30-day money-back guarantee. 20% off with code BH20.
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The Reset Companion
A calmer way to work through any of the Resets, one question at a time. Ask it what to do first, what to drop, or what the evidence says. Your first 30 messages are free.
Try The Reset Companion →
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There’s something rather exhausting about being told that stress is bad for you.
You’re already dealing with whatever is making life difficult. Then someone tells you that the stress itself might be damaging your health, which gives you one more thing to worry about. And if you become seriously ill, it can leave you wondering whether you somehow brought it on yourself.
That’s why this week’s research into stress and cancer is worth reading. The largest analyses haven’t found convincing evidence that psychological stress independently causes cancer. One research team went so far as to say they hoped their findings would reassure people who blamed their diagnosis on a difficult period in their lives. It’s an important point, and one that doesn’t get made often enough.
Of course stress matters. Anyone who’s spent weeks sleeping badly, feeling overwhelmed or struggling to switch off knows that. It can make everyday life harder, affect our relationships and leave less energy for the things we enjoy. But we don’t need to turn every difficult emotion into another potential disease risk.
Perhaps that’s the more useful way to think about managing stress. Not as another health target to hit, or another thing to get right, but as a way of making life a little easier. And sometimes that starts with doing less, rather than finding another thing to do.
Until next week,
The Vitae Team
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Gold Was $35 When This Mine Closed. Now It's $4,000.
The War Production Board shut this gold mine in 1942, and with gold fixed at $35 an ounce it never came back. Gold now trades above $4,000. A tiny company valued under $20 million owns it and started drilling again this summer. Get the free report and the ticker.
