When does new evidence warrant a change in practice?

I'm sharing my substack post which explores when emerging evidence may prompt us to rethink existing evidence or an existing practice. I look at this through the lens of women's health, not an EA topic, but perhaps it should be 🤔. A recurring obstacle is that much of the gold‑standard evidence behind mainstream fitness advice was generated in studies where women were an after‑thought or entirely absent. An audit of 1,382 original articles across three top sports‑medicine journals found that only 39% of the six million participants were female. 

Against that backdrop, this post examines three areas where emerging women‑focused evidence is perhaps forcing some rethinking of established practices: intermittent fasting protocols, thermal stress strategies, and training planning that is better in alignment with female physiology. The aim is not to lay down a new set of health and wellness rules for women, but to reveal how emerging evidence can prompt us to revise our thinking and refine our approach. This is by no means an exhaustive review of the evidence, but is meant to provide a sense of the research out there. Much of the newer evidence is not perfect, in that we don’t have many conclusive RCTs or impact studies, but the question still remains, when do we connect enough dots to change our behaviors and start doubting some established norms.