The Split's health writers dig into the science, the experiments, and the fundamentals of living well.
The 10,000-step goal was invented by a pedometer brand in 1964. Recent data on 110,000+ participants shows heart benefits start at 7,100 steps, and 3 minutes of brisk incidental movement cuts heart attack risk by 51%. The wearable industry built its default target on a marketing decision, not a clinical threshold.
By Kai Brighton · 3 min read
Brockton Hospital ran on paper for 9 days after a ransomware attack in April 2026. Chemotherapy was cancelled. Ambulances were diverted. The instinct to go back to paper permanently is understandable and wrong.
By Dr. Alex Chen · 4 min read
North Carolina's proposed Medicaid work requirement includes a three-month lookback period that critics say will deny coverage to people who already qualify. The research on what coverage gaps do to health outcomes is not complicated. People skip medications, miss screenings, and get sicker.
By Maya Okafor · 3 min read
XDR Shigella went from 0% to 8.5% of US isolates in 12 years. There are no FDA-approved oral treatments for the worst strains. The reason this stays quiet is that most deaths happen in poor children abroad, and that is exactly the wrong reason to ignore a resistance curve this steep.
By Kai Brighton · 3 min read
The "starvation mode" claim was always bad science. But a 20-year study of 3,000 adults published this month suggests that when you eat matters far more than whether you skip breakfast at all.
By Dr. Alex Chen · 3 min read
South Carolina has 670 measles cases. Utah has 600. The US hit 1,792 confirmed cases by April 23, and the first quarter of 2026 nearly matched all of last year. This is not a media cycle. It is a vaccination gap, and the fix takes one phone call.
By Maya Okafor · 3 min read
Poison control calls for kratom-related substances jumped 1,200% in a decade, and states are banning everything with the word kratom on the label. The problem is that synthetic 7-hydroxymitragynine and traditional kratom leaf are not the same product. Regulators are using one blunt instrument where they need two very different ones.
By Kai Brighton · 3 min read
Celiac disease takes an average of 8 years to diagnose. AI could help. But as of April 2026, no validated trial says it should replace the pathologist reading your biopsy, and the hype is running well ahead of the data.
By Dr. Alex Chen · 3 min read
More than 50 health clinics closed last year after a Medicaid funding rule cut reimbursements for preventive care. The rule was framed as anti-abortion policy. What it actually eliminated was mammograms, STI tests, and birth control for people with no other options. This is what happens when prevention becomes a political football.
By Maya Okafor · 3 min read
West Suburban Medical Center collapsed because 90% of its work went unbilled for a year. San Francisco is closing youth clinics to close a $643 million budget gap. These are not isolated failures. They are previews of what happens when the infrastructure underneath your health breaks down.
By Kai Brighton · 3 min read
A Japanese pedometer company invented the 10,000-step target in 1965 with no clinical evidence whatsoever. A 72,174-person study published last week suggests the number was accidentally correct. The caveats are worth your attention.
By Dr. Alex Chen · 3 min read
A Cochrane review of 20,342 patients just found that amyloid-clearing Alzheimer's drugs produce almost no meaningful cognitive benefit. The plaques disappear. The disease doesn't.
By Maya Okafor · 3 min read
A Tulane study just linked untreated syphilis to a 92% higher hemorrhagic stroke risk and nearly 6x higher death odds. The infection is antibiotic-treatable. The cardiovascular damage it causes is not. Providers need to update their screening protocols before the next wave of cases compounds this problem.
By Kai Brighton · 3 min read
A 1,134-person study found that obese men accumulate dangerous visceral fat while obese women face higher inflammation and worse cholesterol. Same BMI, different disease. Obesity medicine has been treating them identically anyway.
By Dr. Alex Chen · 4 min read
The 'butter is back' crowd has been loud for a decade. The American Heart Association's 2026 guidelines didn't get the memo. Here's what the actual evidence says, and what to do with it at dinner tonight.
By Maya Okafor · 4 min read
California capped hospital spending at 3.5% in 2026. Insurers raised premiums over 8% anyway. The savings did not pass through to consumers because there is no mechanism requiring them to.
By Kai Brighton · 4 min read
Private equity spent $104 billion on U.S. healthcare in 2024. Mortality rose in the facilities it acquired. This is not a market accident or a regulatory glitch. It is the system performing as designed.
By Dr. Alex Chen · 3 min read
The food-as-medicine movement has real science behind it. It also has a messaging problem that is sending some people off their prescriptions. Diet and drugs are not rivals; they are tools for different moments in the same fight.
By Maya Okafor · 3 min read
CMS just proposed mandating a joint replacement payment model that genuinely saved Medicare money for 8 years. The data is clean. The problem is what it does not prove about value-based care everywhere else.
By Kai Brighton · 3 min read
Every flagship AI model tested in a new JAMA study failed to produce appropriate differential diagnoses more than 80% of the time. One-third of American adults are already using these tools for health advice. The gap between those 2 facts is where people get hurt.
By Dr. Alex Chen · 3 min read
Intermittent fasting produces real weight loss in the short term. After 6 months, the evidence gets complicated and the regain rates start looking familiar. Whether it works long term has less to do with the fasting window and more to do with whether it fits your actual life.
By Maya Okafor · 4 min read
RFK Jr. lost in court when a judge ruled his ACIP appointees unqualified, so he rewrote the qualifications. That is not safety science. That is rigging the inputs and waiting for the output you wanted.
By Kai Brighton · 3 min read
The silica panic about engineered stone countertops is aimed at the wrong people. Installed slabs pose no documented risk to homeowners. The workers who cut them are developing irreversible lung disease in their 20s, and the manufacturers knew.
By Dr. Alex Chen · 3 min read
A Duke-led trial gave over 1,600 kidney stone patients daily support to drink more water for 2 years. Their intake went up. Their stone recurrence didn't budge. The advice isn't bad. It's just being asked to do more than it can.
By Maya Okafor · 3 min read
Stress management lowers blood sugar. The mechanism is real and the data is solid. But a study published this week found that eating sugar before your relaxation session blocks the parasympathetic response entirely, and most people running this protocol have no idea.
By Kai Brighton · 4 min read
A steroid injection costs $200 in a private office and $600 at a hospital-owned site. That gap is consolidation's arithmetic, and it compounds with every merger. Missouri just voted to accelerate it without a single safeguard attached.
By Dr. Alex Chen · 3 min read
