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The Most Dangerous Word in Medical Science
Think about the last time you asked yourself a simple health question. Something like… ‘What’s the best type of exercise for me?’
You probably did what we have all been doing since “googling” officially became a gerund. You open a browser. You type in your question. And you get a million answers.
One headline says, ‘HIIT is the only workout you’ll ever need.’ The next says, ‘Slow, steady-state cardio is king for longevity.’ A TikTok weirdo swears by heavy lifting. And members of the Pilates cult evangelize body contortions that you never thought possible outside of a cartoon.
By now, you’re left more confused than when you started.
The problem isn’t a lack of information. It’s that almost all the health advice you read is based on the single most deceptive and dangerous word in medical science: “average.”
Every study, every headline, every breakthrough is based on the “average result.” One study finds that, ‘on average,’ participants reduced their body weight and fat by 4 kg in response to a 12-week strictly controlled exercise intervention. But behind this simple average hides a frustrating reality: some participants lost a lot more weight and fat, many a substantially smaller amount, and a few poor souls actually came out heavier [1].
