Metabolic Myths exists because the distance between what the research actually shows and what circulates online has become wide enough to hurt people.
Insulin resistance, blood sugar, GLP-1 medications and metabolic syndrome are among the most confidently discussed and least carefully sourced topics on the internet. The same claim will be presented as settled fact by one account and debunked as a myth by the next, often with equal certainty and neither with a citation. We work in that gap.
How we choose what to cover
We start from claims people are actually encountering, not from topics that happen to be easy to write about. A claim earns a page here when it is circulating widely, when acting on it would change someone’s decisions about food, medication or monitoring, and when the underlying evidence is clear enough to say something useful about.
Some claims do not meet that last test. Where the honest answer is that nobody knows yet, we would rather say so than manufacture a verdict.
How we weigh evidence
The single thing we do that most health writing does not is tell you what kind of evidence a claim rests on. A randomised controlled trial in humans is not the same as an observational association, which is not the same again as a mechanism demonstrated in mice. All three get reported in the same confident tone elsewhere. Here they are labelled.
How far we chase a source depends on what the claim does. Anything carrying a number, a risk figure, or an implication for treatment goes back to the primary research or to an official health body — if we tell you something halves a risk, that traces to the study itself. For background and general explanation we will draw on reputable secondary sources, and we name them in the text so you can see what you are getting.
What we will not do is present a manufacturer, a supplement company, or an advocacy organisation as evidence for a position it exists to promote.
Our full rules, including how we handle corrections and where the lines sit, are set out in our editorial standards.
When the science is genuinely contested
A great deal of metabolic research is unsettled, and pretending otherwise is its own kind of misinformation. Where researchers disagree, we show the disagreement: what each side argues, what evidence they lean on, and what would need to be true for either to be right.
A verdict of “it’s more complicated than that” is a real answer, not a hedge. Where we use it, we explain precisely which part is complicated.
How we are funded
This site is supported by advertising, including programmatic advertising and direct sponsorship. Advertisers have no input into what we cover, what we conclude, or how a claim is assessed. No sponsor sees a page before it publishes, and no commercial relationship has ever changed a verdict.
We think readers are entitled to know how a health publication pays for itself, because the funding model is often the thing that explains the conclusion. Ours is disclosed here so you can weigh it.
Corrections
We will get things wrong. When we do, we correct the page and say what changed rather than quietly editing it. Evidence also moves: a verdict that was reasonable three years ago may not survive a new trial, and pages are revisited when the underlying research shifts.