💊↗
14,000 (1.4万) male doctors took a multivitamin for eleven years. As many of them had a major heart or blood vessel event or died as among those who did not take it. When 9 trials with more than 50,000 (5万) people are looked at together, there is also no visible effect on death. Skipping it saves 200 to 700 CNY a year. People who have been found to be truly deficient in a nutrient, and pregnant women taking folic acid, are not covered by this item.
- High value
- Evidence A
- Saves money
- Disputed
🐟↗
Two large trials enrolled 26,000 (2.6万) people and 15,000 (1.5万) people with diabetes. Among those who took 1 gram of fish oil a day, as many had a major heart or blood vessel event or died as among those who did not. “Eating fish is good for you” does not mean “fish oil capsules are good for you.” Skipping it saves 400 to 1000 CNY a year.
- High value
- Evidence A
- Saves money
- Disputed
☀️↗
People who were not deficient in vitamin D to begin with took it for 5 years, and as many got cancer, got cardiovascular disease or died as among those who did not take it. People found to be truly deficient, people with osteoporosis, and people who get no sun for long periods are not covered by this item; they should take it as their doctor says.
- High value
- Evidence A
- Saves money
- Disputed
🫐↗
This one is worse than useless. When 78 trials with nearly 300,000 (30万) people are pooled, people who took antioxidant supplements had slightly higher death rates. In two large trials done specifically in smokers, beta-carotene raised the share who got lung cancer by 18% to 28% and raised deaths by 8% to 17%. Smokers and people who have been exposed to asbestos should especially not take it.
- High value
- Evidence A
- Buys life
🦴↗
People with knee osteoarthritis who took a fake pill for 24 weeks also had about 60% say it hurt less. People taking glucosamine or chondroitin did only 4 to 5 percentage points better than that, a gap so small it may be chance. For 700 to 1800 CNY a year, what you mostly buy is that 60% effect of the mind.
- High value
- Evidence A
- Saves money
- Disputed
🍊↗
Taking vitamin C every day will hardly make you catch fewer colds, and starting it after you already have a cold works only some of the time. Taking it every day shortens one cold by about 8%, which is about half a day less misery; whether that is worth 300 to 500 CNY a year is for you to work out. Marathon runners and soldiers marching in cold regions are the exception: among them, the number who caught a cold was cut in half.
- Moderate value
- Evidence A
- Saves money
- Disputed
🩻↗
When people with no symptoms get checked, what turns up most often is a false alarm. Over 80% of people who had a whole-body CT had at least one “abnormality” found, and nearly 40% were called back for further tests, but most were benign. Among women screened with an ovarian cancer marker, slightly more died of ovarian cancer, and some had a surgery for nothing because of a false alarm.
- High value
- Evidence A
- Buys life
⌚↗
Overweight people were given the same diet and exercise plan. After two years, the ones wearing an activity band had lost 3.5 kg and the ones not wearing one had lost 5.9 kg. If you want to lose weight, spending money on a device does not help; what works is the exercise itself.
- High value
- Evidence B
- Saves money
🥬↗
There is no strong evidence that organic food is more nutritious. Only 3 studies actually looked at how healthy people were after eating it, and none saw a difference. The share of organic produce with detectable pesticide residue is indeed 30 percentage points lower, but detected does not mean over the limit. Eating more vegetables and fruit is useful in itself, and whether they are organic does not change that.
- High value
- Evidence B
- Saves money
🍲↗
The common ingredients such as multivitamins, fish oil and vitamin D have each been checked in the first six items of this section, and none was seen to work. The line on the package, “health foods are not drugs and cannot replace drug treatment of disease,” is something the department that regulates health foods requires to be printed. This money is mostly spent on parents, carried to their door as a gift. The thought behind it is fine; the thing chosen is the wrong one.
- Top value
- Evidence C
- Saves money
🦠↗
When 45 trials in healthy adults are looked at together, taking probiotics does not lastingly change the bacteria in the gut, which go back to what they were once you stop, and it does not improve blood fats either. There is separate evidence for specific situations such as diarrhea caused by antibiotics, which are not covered by this item.
- Moderate value
- Evidence B
- Saves money
🚿↗
In a trial of 3018 people, those who took cold showers called in sick 29% less often, but the total number of sick days was the same as everyone else's, so it cannot be said they got sick less. A 2025 review that pooled 11 trials found that after a cold rinse, markers of inflammation in the body actually rose briefly, while markers of immunity did not change. Take them if you like them; just don't treat it as a health investment.
- Moderate value
- Evidence B
- Saves money
- Disputed
🧪↗
The detox industry is very large, but clinical evidence for it is very thin, and nobody has seriously run a trial on the detox diets sold on the market. Someone looked up whether dietary acid-base balance, alkaline water and cancer are related, and found only 1 study that qualified, which saw no link either.
- High value
- Evidence C
- Saves money
🚰↗
Someone went looking specifically for where “8 glasses a day” came from and could not find a single study that supports 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 glance at the color of your urine, and that is enough. People who work in the heat, do hard exercise, have had kidney stones, or are older and don't feel thirsty much should drink on purpose.
- Moderate value
- Evidence C
- Saves money
🔮↗
In a classic classroom experiment, students were given a “personality analysis” that was in fact the same identical one for everyone, yet most found it very accurate. That is why fortune-telling seems accurate. Astrologers picked the right answer about as often as blind guessing. The cost is not just a few dozen CNY: in a fortune-telling ring in Xi County, Henan, which collected “incense money” and “offering packages” (供养套餐) of up to 3888 CNY, the ringleader got eleven years.
- High value
- Evidence B
- Saves money
👓↗
Blue-light lenses don't work, and skipping them saves a markup of several hundred to over 1000 CNY. Compared with ordinary lenses, people wearing them show no difference in how tired their eyes get or how clearly they see, and no evidence has been found that they protect the back of the eye. Sore, dry eyes from looking at a screen recover; what really damages eyes is welding arc light, ultraviolet light, lasers, and an acute attack of glaucoma.
- High value
- Evidence A
- Saves money
🩸↗
The claim that giving blood detoxes you, lowers blood fats and prevents heart attacks is not reliable. People who can keep donating are healthier to begin with, and once that is subtracted, the drop in death rate for each extra donation a year shrinks from nearly 20% to 7.5%. In the trial that really split people into groups, there was no difference in deaths. On the other side, donating too often does leave people without energy and sensitive to cold, because of iron deficiency.
- Moderate value
- Evidence A
- Buys life
🩺↗
People who get regular general health checks have the same death rate as those who don't, and die of heart and blood vessel disease and cancer just as often. Getting the few screenings that have evidence for your age and sex is enough. From age 35 you can get your blood pressure measured free once a year, and from age 65 there is a free checkup once a year.
- High value
- Evidence A
- Saves money
🧫↗
For people with high uric acid who have never had a gout attack or developed gout tophi, the American College of Rheumatology recommends not starting uric-acid-lowering drugs yet. 24 people have to take it for a full 3 years to prevent one gout attack. The hope of using it to protect the kidneys also fell through: the kidney function of people on the drug kept falling just as fast as those on a fake pill. Treat it if an attack actually happens.
- Moderate value
- Evidence A
- Buys life
🩻↗
People who have stones in the gallbladder but have never had pain stayed symptom-free for about 80% of the next nine years. If you leave it alone, emergencies such as gallbladder inflammation or pancreatitis happen to roughly one in a thousand to three in a thousand people a year. Removing the gallbladder is not risk-free either: about 1.5% of people have the bile duct injured. So European and British guidelines both say not to operate while there are no symptoms.
- High value
- Evidence A
- Buys life
- Disputed
🥛↗
People who have had calcium oxalate stones are often told to eat less calcium, but the trial result was the opposite. Men with recurring stones who ate a normal amount of calcium and also ate less animal protein and salt had only half as many recurrences over five years as those on a low-calcium diet. The UK guideline also states plainly not to restrict calcium.
- Top value
- Evidence A
- Buys life
- Disputed
🧿↗
The claim that wearing one can change your fortune, attract wealth or nurture you has no evidence anyone can check. It works on the same principle as fortune-telling seeming accurate: the words are general enough that you fit them to yourself. When a seller pushes the claim to the point of curing illness, that is false advertising, and in 2026 a livestream room was investigated and punished for it. Buying one as a decoration is fine.
- Moderate value
- Evidence B
- Saves money
🛍️↗
The more weight people put on money and material things, the less happy they report being, but the link is weak and it cannot be told which causes which. Other research has found that spending money on an experience makes people happier than buying a thing. So when your mood is low, spending on an outing or a meal with people is more likely to help than filling a shopping cart.
- Moderate value
- Evidence B
- Saves money
- Disputed
💎↗
Compare people with the same income: the more their neighbors earn, the lower the happiness the person reports. This happens only with neighbors who have the same education as the person and who are in frequent contact. 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, so the absolute level still counts.
- Moderate value
- Evidence B
- Saves money
🧠↗
The popular claim is: do one thing that takes self-control first, and you will then be more likely to slip afterward, so you should ration your willpower. 23 labs with 2141 people repeated the experiment with the same protocol, and the result was almost zero. Stop explaining yourself with “I've used up my willpower today,” and don't spend money on courses that teach you to save up willpower.
- High value
- Evidence A
- Saves time
🍳↗
The popular claim is that skipping breakfast makes people overeat at lunch and dinner, so the daily total ends up higher. In trials that was not so: people who skipped breakfast ate more than 200 kcal less a day and weighed slightly less. Comparing 16:8 with simply eating less, weight after a year was no different either. People who long-term skip breakfast do have about 17% more heart and blood vessel disease, while total death rate shows no difference.
- Moderate value
- Evidence A
- Buys life
- Disputed
🩺↗
No research says masturbation harms the body. Men who ejaculate often have about 20% less prostate cancer, but some studies also saw higher risk in those with high frequency when young. A small number of people feel drained after every ejaculation, as if they have a cold, and take several days to recover; this is a rare illness that can be seen by a urologist or men's health clinic (男科). Feeling “addicted to porn” is more often because the habit clashes with one's own moral beliefs.
- Moderate value
- Evidence B
- Buys life
- Disputed
🏳️🌈↗
An expert panel of the American Psychological Association, after reviewing the research, said that this kind of conversion cannot change sexual orientation and may harm people. In one U.S. survey, people who had gone through conversion were nearly 90% more likely to have had suicidal thoughts. In China, a psychiatric hospital involuntarily admitted a man under the label “sexual preference disorder” (性偏好障碍); a court found infringement and ordered 5000 CNY in compensation.
- Top value
- Evidence B
- Buys life
- Disputed
🏋️↗
Workers who took a lifting posture training were no less likely to get back pain later than those who didn't. People whose backs bent more when lifting were not seen to get back pain more easily either. What is linked to back pain is lifting heavy and lifting often: each extra 10 kg per lift or each extra 10 lifts a day raises the risk by about 10%. People who exercise regularly have back pain attacks that are over 30% to over 40% less frequent.
- Moderate value
- Evidence A
- Buys life
- Disputed
🍲↗
In trials of vitamin D after a fracture, none saw bones heal better. Studies of calcium and vitamin D taken together are few, and it cannot be said whether it helps. The calcium in a big bowl of bone broth is only a few dozenths of what you are supposed to get in a day. People who are deficient in vitamin D to begin with, or who have osteoporosis, are a different case.
- High value
- Evidence B
- Saves money
- Disputed
🤖↗
Give an AI a complete case file and it recognizes the disease more than 90% of the time. But when ordinary people ask it about symptoms, fewer of them recognize the disease than people who looked it up online on their own, and they were no better at judging whether to go to the emergency room. On legal questions, general-purpose AI makes up content in at least 58% of its answers, and it will go along with a mistaken claim built into your question.
- Moderate value
- Evidence A
- Buys life
- Disputed
🐷↗
By the World Health Organization's figures for China, about 92% of 30-year-olds live to 60, and more than half live to 80. Young people commonly overestimate their chance of dying early, and living by that feeling leaves them with about a quarter less saved than they should have. For most people, the thing to worry about is the money running out before they do.
- Moderate value
- Evidence B
- Saves money
