Top o’ the mornin’. The Starbucks Fall menu comes out next week, but did you know Chick-fil-A now has pretzel bun sandwiches? It’s basically Oktoberfest! Prost! 🍻 

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The truth about “THE TRUTH ABOUT EVERYTHING!”

The TRUTH about testosterone! The TRUTH about why you’re not losing stubborn belly fat! The TRUTH about apple cider vinegar and your gut! The TRUTH about menopause and muscle! The TRUTH about why cardio is killing you!

The clickbaity headlines go on and on. You’ve likely seen them. And if you weren’t born yesterday, you probably know these articles and short-form videos and podcasts are going to be a lot of opinion and a little bit of truth.

In 2025, “truth” has lost much of its meaning. Anything can be a “truth” if we shout it loudly enough. We’ve even made up social media platforms with “truth” in the name to spout off whatever opinions cross our mind.

The reality is, even (especially?) in science, there’s still rarely objective truth. There is only our best, most educated interpretation of findings at the time.

• Think about it: mere centuries ago, people were almost killed for claiming the earth was round or that the universe didn’t revolve around us. 

There are very few truths in science. When we are finally able to deem something as true, it becomes a “law” (e.g. gravity). Even then, those laws might not apply in other galaxies. Most of what we take as “truth” is still just theory based on the evidence to date.

That’s the beauty—but also the danger—of science. It’s never meant to be final. We hypothesize and theorize and test. But even still, we’re often just coming up with averages and trying to come to conclusions that reach “statistical significance.” One scientific finding isn’t meant to become an eternal truth.

Health & Fitness “truths”

To bring it back to health and fitness, rewind just a few decades to the 90s, and we all thought dietary fat was the most evil force in the universe and going to ruin us all. Just a couple decades later, people were on ketogenic diets, avoiding and vilifying carbs. 

We tend to run with whatever hot new evidence at the time points us in one direction. But the difficulty with public health messaging is that headlines and news outlets—and now social media—grab ahold of it and run 99 yards in the other direction, taking things to an extreme. It’s hard to convey nuanced takes that should only incrementally affect our understanding of the world.

Rarely anymore should any scientific findings completely shift paradigms 180 degrees. We’ve advanced a lot in so many fields that even major breakthrough findings should probably only tweak our current understanding of things to a small degree. Like, 2 degrees, not 180. 

So when a clickbaity “everything you thought you knew about this was WRONG” headline comes your way, take it with not just a grain, but a frozen tv dinner level of salt. It’s probably not that revolutionary.

Right now, protein is all the rage. It seems like we’ve finally landed on a reasonable recommendation of “consume a lot of protein, a healthy amount of healthy fats, and an appropriate amount of carbs based on activity level and individual needs” type recommendation. That seems reasonable, but who knows what the consensus will be a century or even a decade from now?

Fitness trends come and go, ebb and flow. There’s Gene Simmons and Arnold Schwarzenegger and Yoga with Adriene and everything in between. Everything isn’t for everyone, but it seems like most things should be applicable for most people. 

Stay balanced, stay nuanced, and don’t let one podcaster’s crazy guest completely shift the way you think about something. They’re probably just trying to gain clout and make a buck. 

Be your own scientist and conduct your own experiments on your health, with a calculated degree of risk vs. reward.

In conclusion, who knows?

The “truth” about anything can be objective, but when it comes to our bodies, it’s all got to be subjective, too.

• For example, it’s actually facts at this point that a diet high in saturated fat may have little to no impact on one person’s cholesterol while it sends another person’s to the moon.

• One person’s body may respond great to a certain type of exercise, while another person’s build would just cause them to injure themselves if they tried it.

All of our “truths” are based not only on scientific evidence, but also on the years of our life experience, preferences, influences, and opinions forged over time. 

“The current, most evidence-based and widely applicable educated guess for the time being on _____” just doesn’t make for a sexy headline. 

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER.

-DTH

✅ Take Action

Every newsletter's Take Action section will invite you to take small steps to improve your health. Recognizing that we all have different capabilities, I'll offer three different levels of action you can choose to take.

Level 1: Next time you see a clickbaity headline, pause and think twice. Is it really going to be the revolutionary, or do they just want your time, attention, and revenue?

Level 2: Try things out for yourself. Change one variable for a little while and see if there’s any measurable difference in your life.

Level 3: Be a lifelong learner. Hold your opinions with an open mind and remain adaptable to science as new discoveries unfold, but weave them into your existing beliefs without letting single findings completely shift your paradigm.

This newsletter is brought to you by… me!

Interested in becoming a sponsor? Know someone else who might be? I’d love to get to know you and/or your business and see how we can partner together. Reply to this email!

✍️ Drew's Picks:

• Are you on trend?: This chart shows the increase and decrease of exercise trends from 2019-2024. What’ve you added or dropped?

• Fall: When leaves will reach peak color across the US this fall!

• Don’t cry: Insights on red eyes and eye drops

Later, gators! 🐊 

Keep moving,

Drew

The content in Move to Improve is meant to be informative in nature, but it should not be taken as medical advice. It is always a good idea to consult with a trusted health professional before making any major lifestyle changes that could have a significant impact on your health. This is not a medical resource, and any opinions and articles are not intended for use as diagnosis, prevention, and/or treatment of health problems. They are not substitutes for consulting a qualified medical professional. Please think critically and take what I say with a grain of salt (aka don’t sue me).