The Counter-List

14,000 male doctors took multivitamins for eleven years. The number who had a major heart or blood-vessel event, and the number who died, were the same as among those who did not take them. Looking at 9 trials and more than 50,000 people together, no effect on death can be seen either. Not buying them saves you two hundred to seven hundred yuan a year. People found to be genuinely short of a particular nutrient, and pregnant women taking folic acid, are not covered by this item.

Two large trials enrolled 26,000 people and 15,000 people with diabetes, respectively. Those who took 1 gram of fish oil a day had as many major heart and blood-vessel events, and as many deaths, as those who did not. “Eating fish is good for you” does not mean “taking fish-oil capsules is good for you.” Not buying it saves you four hundred to a thousand yuan a year.

In people who were not short of vitamin D to begin with, taking it for 5 years left the number who got cancer, the number who got cardiovascular disease and the number who died the same as among those who did not take it. People found to be genuinely short of it, people with osteoporosis, and people who get no sun for long periods are not covered by this item; they should supplement as their doctor says.

This one is not merely useless. Pooling 78 trials and nearly 300,000 people, those who took antioxidant supplements actually had a slightly higher death rate. In two large trials done specifically in smokers, β-carotene raised the rate of lung cancer by 18% to 28%, and death by 8% to 17%. Smokers and people who have been exposed to asbestos especially should not take them.

Among people with knee osteoarthritis who took a fake pill for 24 weeks, six in ten still said the pain had eased. Those who took glucosamine or chondroitin did only four or five percentage points better than that, so small it may be just chance. Spending seven hundred to eighteen hundred yuan a year basically buys you the psychological effect behind that six in ten.

Taking vitamin C every day basically does not make you catch fewer colds, and starting it only once you have a cold works sometimes and not other times. Taking it every day can shorten a cold by about 8%, which is half a day less of feeling bad; whether that is worth three to five hundred yuan a year is for you to work out. Marathon runners and soldiers marching in cold regions are the exception: among them, half as many of those who took it caught a cold.

When people with no symptoms get checked, what turns up most is a false alarm. More than eight in ten people who get a whole-body CT have at least one “abnormality” found, and nearly four in ten are called back for more tests, yet most of it is benign. Women screened with ovarian cancer markers actually died of ovarian cancer slightly more often, and some had an operation for nothing because of a false alarm.

Overweight people followed the same diet and exercise program; those who wore a fitness band lost 3.5 kg over two years, while those who did not actually lost 5.9 kg. If you want to lose weight, spending money on a device does not help; what really works is the exercise itself.

There is no strong evidence that organic food is more nutritious. Only 3 studies actually looked at how people's health turned out after eating it, and none of them saw a difference. Organic produce is indeed 30 percentage points less likely to have pesticide residues detected, but detected does not mean over the limit. Eating more vegetables and fruit is useful in itself, and whether they are organic does not affect that.

Common ingredients such as multivitamins, fish oil and vitamin D have already been checked one by one in the first six items of this section, and none was seen to work. The line on the package, “Health food is not medicine and cannot replace medicine in treating disease,” must be printed by rule of the authority that regulates health food. This money is mostly spent on gifts for parents, carried along on a visit; there is nothing wrong with the thought behind it, it is only that the wrong thing was chosen.

Looking at 45 trials in healthy adults together, taking probiotics does not change the bacteria in your gut for the long term: once you stop, they go back to how they were, and blood lipids do not improve either. Specific situations such as diarrhea from taking antibiotics have separate evidence and are not covered by this item.

In a trial of 3018 people, those who took cold showers took sick leave 29% fewer times, but their total days of sick leave were the same as everyone else's, so it cannot be said they got sick less. In 2025, looking at 11 trials together, after rinsing in cold water the body's inflammation markers actually rose for a short time, and the immune markers did not change. If you like cold showers, take them as you please; just don't treat them as an investment in your health.

The detox industry has grown very large, but the clinical evidence supporting it is very thin, and no one has seriously tested the detox diets sold on the market. When someone checked whether the acidity of food, alkaline water and cancer are related, they found only 1 study good enough to count, and it showed no link either.

Someone set out specifically to trace where “8 glasses of water a day” came from, and did not find a single study supporting it. Food and other drinks already carry a lot of water, so you do not need to drink that much. Drink when you are thirsty, and looking at the color of your urine is enough. People doing physical work in hot weather, people exercising hard, people who have had kidney stones, and older people who do not feel thirst much need to make a point of drinking more.

There is a classic classroom experiment: the “personal personality analysis” the students received was in fact identical, one copy for each of them, yet they broadly felt it was very accurate. This is exactly why fortune-telling seems accurate. Astrologers picked correctly about as often as guessing blindly. The cost is not just a few dozen yuan: in the fortune-telling gang in Xi County, Henan, which collected “incense money” and “offering packages” of up to 3888 yuan, the principal offender was sentenced to eleven years.

Blue-light lenses don't work; not buying them saves a markup of several hundred to a thousand or more. Compared with ordinary lenses, people who wear them show no difference in how tired their eyes get or how clearly they can see, and no evidence was found that they protect the back of the eye. Sore, dry eyes from looking at screens recover; what actually damages eyes is welding arc light, ultraviolet light, lasers, and acute glaucoma attacks.

Claims that donating blood detoxifies, lowers blood lipids and prevents heart attacks don't hold up. People who are able to keep donating were healthier to begin with; once that is subtracted, the drop in death rate for each extra donation a year shrinks from nearly 20% to 7.5%. In trials that actually split people into groups to compare, there was no difference in the number of deaths. Conversely, donating too often really does leave people without energy and feeling cold, and the cause is iron deficiency.

People who get regular general health checks have the same death rate as people who don't, and as many die of cardiovascular disease and cancer. Getting the few screenings that have evidence for your age and sex is enough. People over 35 can get a free blood pressure measurement once a year, and people over 65 get one free health checkup a year.

For people whose uric acid is above the limit but who have never had a gout attack or developed tophi, the American College of Rheumatology advises not taking urate-lowering drugs for now. 24 people have to take them for a full 3 years to prevent one gout attack. Hoping they will protect the kidneys doesn't work out either: in people taking the drug, kidney function still declines, just as fast as in people taking a placebo. Treat it once you have actually had an attack.

Among people who have stones in the gallbladder but have never had pain, about eight in ten stayed free of symptoms over nearly nine years. If you leave it alone, about one to three in a thousand a year develop an emergency such as cholecystitis or pancreatitis. Removing the gallbladder is not risk-free either: about 1.5% of people have their bile duct injured. So the European and British guidelines both say: no symptoms, don't remove it for now.

People who have had calcium oxalate stones are often told to eat less calcium; the trial results point exactly the other way. Among men with recurring stones who ate normal amounts of calcium while cutting back on animal protein and salt, the number who had a recurrence over five years was only half that among those on a low-calcium diet. The British guideline also states clearly not to restrict calcium.

Claims that wearing one can change your fortune, attract wealth or nourish the wearer have no evidence that can be checked. It works the same way fortune-telling seems accurate: when the words are vague enough, you fit them to yourself. When sellers claim the items can treat illness, that is false advertising; in 2026 a livestream shop was penalized for exactly this. Buying one as a decoration is fine.

The more weight people put on money and possessions, the less happy they feel, but the link is weak, and it cannot tell which causes which. Research has also found that spending money on an experience makes people happier than buying things. So when you feel bad, spending money on an outing or a meal eaten with other people is more likely to help than filling up your shopping cart.

Comparing people with the same income, the more their neighbors earn, the lower the happiness they report. This happens only with neighbors who have the same level of education as you and whom you see often. So the extra money spent to move into a place where everyone is better off than you buys you a move down a notch. But when incomes rise together, people still feel better off; the absolute level still counts.

The popular claim goes: after you do one thing that takes self-control, you are more likely to slip next, so willpower should be rationed. 23 laboratories and 2141 people redid this experiment under the same protocol, and the result was almost zero. Stop explaining yourself with “I've used up my willpower for today,” and don't pay for courses that teach you how to save up willpower.

The popular claim is that skipping breakfast makes people binge at lunch and dinner, so they end up eating more over the whole day. That is not what the trials found: people who skipped breakfast ate a little over two hundred kcal less a day, and weighed slightly less too. Compared with simply eating less, 16:8 also made no difference to weight after a year. People who skip breakfast long term do have about 17% more cardiovascular disease, but no difference can be seen in the risk of death from any cause.

No research says masturbation harms your body. A large US study actually found that men who ejaculated more often had about 20% less prostate cancer. A British study found higher risk in men who did it more often in their twenties and thirties, so neither side can be taken as a reason to do it as a way of keeping your body fit. Many people who feel they are “addicted to porn” feel that way more because it clashes with their own moral views.

After reviewing the research, an expert panel of the American Psychological Association said this kind of correction cannot change sexual orientation and may also cause harm. In a US survey, people who had been through correction were nearly 90% more likely to have had suicidal thoughts. In China, a psychiatric hospital that forcibly admitted a man under the label of “sexual preference disorder” was ruled by a court to have committed infringement and ordered to pay 5000 yuan.

Workers who had lifting-posture training did not go on to have less back pain than those who didn't. People whose backs bend more when they lift were not seen to be more prone to back pain either. What is linked to back pain is lifting heavy loads and lifting a lot: each extra 10 kg per lift or each extra 10 lifts a day raises the risk by about 10%. People who exercise regularly have a little over 30% to a little over 40% fewer back pain episodes.

Of the trials that gave vitamin D after a fracture, not one saw the bone heal better. Studies of taking calcium and vitamin D together are few, so it is unclear whether that helps. The calcium in a big bowl of bone broth is only one part in several dozen of what you should get each day. People who are already low on vitamin D or have osteoporosis are a different case.

Hand an AI a complete case and it recognizes the disease more than 90% of the time. But when ordinary people use it to ask about symptoms, they actually recognize the disease less often than people who look things up online by themselves, and they don't judge any better whether to go to the emergency department. On legal questions, at least 58% of a general-purpose AI's answers contain made-up content, and it will also run with false claims built into your question.