The Claims Department

Take the stairs, park farther away, get your steps in, burn it off. Exercise gets sold as the main way to lose weight. But when you dig into the research, it does a lot less for the number on the scale than most people expect, and a lot more for nearly everything else.

Nick and Zoë start with what happens when people actually start exercising. A well-controlled trial put young adults through 10 months of supervised workouts and saw modest weight loss. A year-long study of postmenopausal women found that most of the change came from diet. Part of the reason is that our bodies and brains adjust. We get hungrier, we move a little less the rest of the day, and something as small as seeing a calorie count on a screen, or calling a workout "fat-burning," can change what we eat afterward.

That's not an argument against exercise. It's an argument for measuring it by more than the scale. Zoë and Nick talk about why the exercise you enjoy will always beat the "optimal" one, why the cardio vs. strength debate is mostly noise, and what extra muscle does and doesn't do for your metabolism. They also cover a meta-analysis of nearly 400,000 people suggesting fitness may say more about long-term health than weight does, and what researchers learned from The Biggest Loser about the costs of chasing weight loss at any price. Plus, why no amount of crunches will choose where your body loses fat, and how each of them got into exercise in the first place and kept at it.

In The Fine Print, Nick finds a soy milk labeled "packed with protein" that has less protein than the regular version, which raises the question of what a "high protein" label actually requires. And in this week's Unforced Error, they look at the Babydust Method and whether timing sex can really decide whether you have a boy or a girl.

Referenced:

• Donnelly et al., Midwest Exercise Trial 2, Obesity (2013)
• Foster-Schubert et al., diet and exercise in postmenopausal women, Obesity (2012)
• McCaig, Hawkins & Rogers, "Licence to eat," Appetite (2016)
• Fenzl et al., "Labeling exercise fat-burning increases post-exercise food consumption in self-imposed exercisers," Appetite (2014)
• Weeldreyer et al., cardiorespiratory fitness, BMI and mortality, British Journal of Sports Medicine (2025)
• Fothergill et al., metabolic adaptation six years after The Biggest Loser, Obesity (2016)
• Vispute et al., "The Effect of Abdominal Exercise on Abdominal Fat," Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research (2011)
• Panteleimon Ekkekakis's research on exercise and enjoyment
• Wilcox, Weinberg & Baird, timing of intercourse and sex of the baby, NEJM (1995)
• Gray et al., sex ratio and timing of insemination, Human Reproduction (1998)
• Nick Tiller, The Skeptic's Guide to Sports Science

Testosterone has become the cure-all of the optimization era. It's sold as the fix for fatigue, low mood, a stalled deadlift, even the fate of Western civilization, and plenty of online clinics will happily sell it to you. But who actually needs it?

Zoë and Nick explain what testosterone does, how low T is actually diagnosed, and why the men most targeted by direct-to-consumer clinics are the least likely to need treatment. They walk through a secret-shopper study of online TRT platforms, a global analysis of men's health clinic websites, and the TRAVERSE trial. They also look at where replacement therapy ends and doping begins.

In this episode:

• Unforced Error: Gary Brecka says we don't inherit disease, and why "show me the hypertension gene" misunderstands genetics
• Four ways to take testosterone, and the hassle that comes with each
• How testosterone became a men's health panic, from the 1930s to Tucker Carlson's The End of Men
• Is testosterone really declining? What population studies can and can't tell us
• What actually lowers testosterone: weight, metabolic health, sleep, stress and under-fueling (RED-S)
• How hypogonadism is diagnosed: repeat morning blood tests plus symptoms
• Replacement vs. enhancement, and the rise of "TRT+"
• Inside the online TRT boom: secret shoppers, influencer clinics and guideline-breaking websites
• Why screening men without symptoms causes more problems than it solves
• What to do if you're actually worried about low T
• The Fine Print: a TikTok's Alka-Seltzer and PR Lotion stack, and why the dose and delivery method matter

Referenced:

• Dubin et al., secret-shopper study of direct-to-consumer testosterone platforms, JAMA Internal Medicine (2022)
• Grant et al. (Imperial College London), "Discordance Between Online Information and Male Hypogonadism Clinical Guidelines: A Global Multilingual Content Analysis," Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (2026)
• The TRAVERSE trial, NEJM (2023), and its fracture analysis (2024)
• Endocrine Society and American Urological Association guidelines on testosterone deficiency (2018)
• Keaton et al., blood pressure genetics in more than 1 million people, Nature Genetics (2024)
• IOC consensus statement on dietary supplements and the high-performance athlete (2018)
• McKay et al. (2020), and a 2023 JISSN study comparing oral bicarb with PR Lotion
• The End of Men (Fox Nation, 2022)
• Our episode on the Enhanced Games

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not medical advice.

In May 2026, the Enhanced Games (aka the "Steroid Olympics") promised to show what humans could do once you stripped away anti-doping rules: medically supervised PEDs, million-dollar bonuses for world records, and a new frontier in human performance. The result was one world record, a swimmer who got slower, and two burst supersuits.

Zoë and Nick look at what performance-enhancing drugs actually do and why "more muscle" doesn't equal "more performance." They also explain why the Games' clinical trial can't answer the question it claims to ask. Then they dig into the company's own SEC filings, which describe the sports event as a customer-acquisition engine for a telehealth, hormone, peptide, and supplement business.

In this episode:

• Caffeine, the world's favorite PED
• The 2004 case for allowing doping in sport, and why moving the line doesn't remove it
• What PEDs do (and don't do): steroids, EPO, stimulants, growth hormone, peptides
• How the Enhanced Games actually worked: handpicked athletes, stipends, Abu Dhabi "training camps"
• Case study: the swimmer who got bigger, sank lower, and swam slower
• Why a 25-week, unblinded, uncontrolled, proprietary trial can't tell us PEDs are safe
• "Sports isn't the core business": reading the investor prospectus
• Optimization is never neutral: who's making the claim, and who profits?

Hundreds of millions of people now ask AI chatbots about their training, diet, and health. Some are uploading their entire medical records. But what is a chatbot actually doing when it answers, and how often does it get it wrong?

Zoë and Nick explain how large language models work and why they're built to give complete answers rather than accurate ones. They also explain why nutrition and exercise science are especially hard for them to get right. Nick walks through his audit of five popular chatbots, published in the BMJ. Nearly half of their answers to health questions were problematic, and out of 250 questions, they declined to answer only twice. Then the hosts look at the rollout of ChatGPT Health, and they close with practical ways to use these tools without letting them use you.

In this episode:

• Unforced Error: the claim that bananas "cancel out" blueberries in a smoothie, and what the study it rests on actually tested
• How Zoë and Nick each use AI, and where it has failed them
• Three phases of AI: next-word prediction, retrieval add-ons, and why finding information isn't the same as evaluating it
• Why principles like progressive overload don't translate into individual prescriptions
• Inside the chatbot audit: red-teaming, coding answers by how problematic they were, and why Grok fared worst
• ChatGPT Health, triage accuracy, and who decides when a tool is ready for the public
• How to be your own content regulator: prompting, evidence thresholds, and checking everything
• The Fine Print: a "superfood" shake, a trademarked peptide, and a "clinical dose" of creatine

In our first episode, Zoë and Nick explain why they started a show about putting health and fitness claims under the microscope. Then they take on one of the biggest trends in gyms, longevity circles, and endurance sport: experimental peptides.

"Peptide" describes a chemical structure, not a benefit. The same category includes GLP-1 drugs tested in tens of thousands of people and gray-market vials labeled "for research use only." Zoë and Nick trace how experimental peptides like BPC-157, TB-500, CJC-1295, and the "Barbie" and "Wolverine" stacks went viral. They also look at what the drug-approval pathway actually requires, and why the evidence is too thin to even put on the scales. BPC-157 has three published human studies, and one of them tested two people for three days.

In this episode:

• Why this show, why now: science-washing, the attention economy, and decisions made on vibes
• Peps, stacks, and TSA-approved travel cases: how peptides became a lifestyle
• Approved peptides versus experimental peptides, or why "all bears" isn't a useful category
• How a drug goes from rodent studies to FDA approval, and why most drugs never make it
• Inside the BPC-157 evidence: roughly 150 studies, mostly in rodents, mostly from one lab
• The "research use only" loophole and what it means if something goes wrong
• Peptides in endurance sport, drug testing, and a study that secretly sampled urine at UTMB
• Appeal to popularity, appeal to nature, and why the marketing never changes
• The Fine Print: what your sleep-tracking ring can and can't measure

Supplements that promise everything. Recovery gadgets with a price tag to match. Wellness trends that go viral before anyone checks the science. The Claims Department, a podcast from UltraSignup, doesn't tell you what to think. It helps you put health and fitness claims under the microscope so you can think better for yourself.

Hosted by journalist Zoë Rom and exercise physiologist Dr. Nick Tiller, author of The Skeptic's Guide to Sports Science, each episode takes on a popular claim about training, nutrition, gear, supplements, or wellness. Zoë and Nick dig into what the research actually shows, where the evidence runs out, and what it would take to change their minds. Along the way, you'll pick up the tools to size up the next claim on your own.

Skeptical, not cynical. Rigorous, not academic. For athletes, the fitness-curious, and anyone who's tired of being sold to.