Illness, infectious disease, injury, chronic conditions, deteriorating mental health, disability and the risks that come with ageing.
In 2024 the WHO dropped the droplet-versus-airborne distinction that underpinned decades of advice. Exhaled particles behave like smoke, not falling cannonballs — which moves ventilation to the top of the list and surface cleaning near the bottom.
The 2024 Lancet Commission put 45% of dementia cases down to 14 modifiable risk factors. Two were added that year — midlife cholesterol and untreated vision loss. Almost none of the list is something you buy, and no supplement appears on it at all.
The WHO and ILO attributed 745,000 deaths in a single year to long working hours — a 35% higher stroke risk at 55+ hours a week. And the WHO defines burnout as workplace stress that was not managed, which puts the failure somewhere other than your resilience.
A million-person meta-analysis found that sitting eight hours a day raised mortality by 59% in inactive people and by almost nothing in active ones. Then 83,013 accelerometer-tracked adults showed standing more gave no cardiovascular benefit at all.
A 60,977-person study found that when you sleep predicts mortality better than how long you sleep — and that the supplement most people buy is the one sleep medicine recommends against. What the cohort data and clinical guidelines actually say.
94% of Americans fall short of vitamin D from food, but only 5% are actually deficient. What the trials, the intake data and the new upper limits say about which nutrients you really need.
