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You would be forgiven for thinking that the recipe for a healthy life is cut and dried: exercise is good, and too much fat is bad. Overindulging in the latter is firmly tied to obesity and heart disease – conditions that could be prevented, or at least eased, by dusting off your running shoes. But this one-size-fits-all formula to achieve a healthy lifestyle doesn’t work for everyone.
When long covid first emerged in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, millions of people were facing a debilitating condition with no obvious treatment. Some studies suggest that exercise, often seen as a cure-all, might offer some relief. But as we report here, for some people with long covid it does the exact opposite, potentially triggering severe muscular and cellular damage.
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Fat, meanwhile, isn’t a universal villain. The high-fat, very-low-carb keto diet has been dismissed by many as a fad, and there is certainly evidence that it can cause high cholesterol, kidney failure and pregnancy complications. But again, the story is more complicated. Evidence is mounting that for some people, going keto could help treat mental health conditions including depression, anorexia and schizophrenia.
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It is time we remember that people are unique – and so, too, are their medical conditions
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The only way to reap these benefits, and avoid harm, is to stop framing medical interventions as a cure-all or overhyped trend. For every condition, there will be people for whom a drug or lifestyle change helps, and people who experience side effects with no benefit. The only way to predict where an individual will fall is to separate conditions into subtypes that are treated differently, such as with diabetes.
This would be a gargantuan effort, requiring us to collect huge amounts of data and carry out more in-depth clinical trials. And then, if we have the knowledge to identify subtypes, doctors will need more time and resources to be able to select a tailored treatment for individuals, rather than reaching for the one-size-fits-all solution. But it is worth doing. It is time we remember that people are unique – and so, too, are their medical conditions.
