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Creatine Without Exercise? What the New Texas A&M Study Actually Found
A 2026 study from Texas A&M University put creatine without exercise to the test: adults aged 45 to 65 who took 10 grams of creatine monohydrate daily for 12 weeks gained lean tissue and strength even without following the study’s exercise program. Headlines have run with the punchiest version: creatine builds muscle without exercise. The…
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p = .117 Is Not ‘No Difference’: Reading Non-Significant Results Correctly
In a study I worked on, we compared self-medication practice between medical and non-medical students and got p = .117. A surprising number of readers translate that into “there is no difference between the groups.” That translation is wrong, and it is one of the most common errors in reading research. A non-significant p-value means…
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What You Believe About Your Illness Shapes Your Health: New IBD Study on Illness Perceptions
This article is for information only and is not medical advice. Yes. What you believe about your illness shapes your health literacy — how you find and understand health information. In a 2026 study of 455 people with inflammatory bowel disease, published in Scientific Reports, researchers found that worsening illness perceptions were followed, months later,…
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What Is a P-Value? A Plain-English Guide for Medical Students
What is a p-value? A p-value is the probability of seeing results at least as extreme as the ones observed, assuming the null hypothesis is true. Put simply, it measures how surprising your data are if nothing is really going on: not the probability that the null hypothesis is true, nor the probability your finding…