What we have
actually read
Everything Ethos has actually worked through, in one place, with the evidence level on each. It is not large yet. What is here was read properly, and what is not here is not here.
Connection and loneliness
The best-evidenced thing in this whole field, and the reason the Monday hour exists.
Attention and practice
What an app is worth once you compare it against something rather than against nothing.
Heat, cold and the nervous system
Two practices sold with the same confidence and supported by very different amounts of evidence.
- What the sauna actually did in FinlandTwo thousand men, twenty years, and the largest effect on the site. Also the study most likely to be quoted at you without its caveats, so here they are.
- The cold plunge, weighed honestlyIt is the most confidently recommended practice in wellness right now, and it has one of the thinnest evidence bases on this site. Both of those things are worth knowing.
- The honest case for a magnesium bathThe popular claim is that magnesium soaks in through your skin. The evidence for that is weak. The bath is still worth having, for reasons that hold up better.
Food
The largest finding in nutrition, and two trials that controlled for everything else.
- The dullest finding in nutrition is also the largestA hundred and eighty-five studies, a hundred and thirty-five million person-years, and a dose-response curve that keeps going down. Nobody sells it, because nobody owns it.
- Five hundred calories nobody choseTwenty people, locked in a research ward, fed two diets matched down to the fibre. On one of them they ate 500 calories a day more without deciding to.
- The one food change with a trial behind itStanford put 36 people on ten weeks of fermented food. Microbial diversity went up, and nineteen inflammatory proteins went down. This is what “food as medicine” looks like when it is real.
Light and sleep
The cheapest intervention on the site.
What plants can and cannot do
One preparation with repeated trials behind it, one best-seller whose trials disagree with each other, and the teas that are a ritual rather than a sedative.
- The plant that worked, until more people lookedIn 2019 the pooled trials said peppermint oil helps three people in every four you treat. In 2022 the same question was asked again, and the answer got smaller and less certain.
- The calm herb with a liver problemThe pooled trials report one of the largest effects on stress we have seen anywhere. They also disagree with each other so violently that the pooling barely means anything, and regulators have started counting hospital admissions.
- What the plants can and cannot doChamomile and valerian are the two most-recommended sleep herbs in the world. The trials are smaller and softer than the recommendations. That is worth knowing before you buy either.
What goes on your skin
The two things a careful reader cannot find by reading the label.
- The chemicals that do not wash offResearchers tested 231 cosmetics for the marker of “forever chemicals”. More than half carried it, and almost none of them said so on the label.
- One word, three thousand ingredients“Fragrance” is a single line on a label and a legal shelter for thousands of chemicals. Here is how that happened, and what it means for a shopping list.
Detox at home
What a cleanse can and cannot do, and the small changes at home that the research supports.
- You already have a detox systemJuice cleanses and detox teas promise to flush out toxins. A review of the research found no good trials behind them. Your liver and kidneys do this work every day.
- Open a window, keep the plantHouseplants are often sold as air cleaners. A review of 30 years of studies found you would need hundreds of them to match an open window.
- What heat does to plasticResearchers heated food-safe plastic containers in a microwave for three minutes. Each square centimetre released millions of tiny plastic pieces into the food.
- Does a break from your phone help?A digital detox sounds simple. The research says it can lower low mood a little. For stress and life satisfaction, the studies do not agree.
Sound
One study, sixty-two people, and everything it cannot tell us.
Alcohol
A finding that survived for decades on a flaw nobody hid.
What we have not written
These are the shelves the blueprint asks for and we have not filled. Writing one properly takes weeks, because it means reading the studies rather than the summaries of them. They will arrive one at a time, and this list will get shorter.
- Stress and the nervous system
- Breath
- Movement
- Nature
- Frequency
- Relationships
- Psychology
- Philosophy and spirituality
- Consciousness
