Lifestyle choices in general aren’t usually going to be studied at all, just because there are so many ways to alter your life. It is true that “paleo diets aren’t supported by scientific evidence”—because they haven’t been tested! There’s basically no nutritional research that assigns study participants to <20g carbohydrate diets.
Subtle differences between lifestyle setups are also not going to be studied. Just as the studies didn’t compare “lightboxes for SAD” to “brighter lightboxes for SAD”, you’re usually not going to see a study that compares one type of physical therapy to a slightly different type, one type of standing desk to a slightly different type, one type of exercise routine to a slightly different type, etc. If fine details of execution matter, the research literature often isn’t going to pick up on that.
(This would also explain why I could believe that, say, a study of accupuncture could find it ineffective for pain relief while one particular person going to a particular accupuncturist could genuinely experience a dramatic effect. If some accupuncturists are “real” while others are “fake”, modern medical research isn’t going to be able to distinguish them.)
Lifestyle choices in general aren’t usually going to be studied at all, just because there are so many ways to alter your life. It is true that “paleo diets aren’t supported by scientific evidence”—because they haven’t been tested! There’s basically no nutritional research that assigns study participants to <20g carbohydrate diets.
Subtle differences between lifestyle setups are also not going to be studied. Just as the studies didn’t compare “lightboxes for SAD” to “brighter lightboxes for SAD”, you’re usually not going to see a study that compares one type of physical therapy to a slightly different type, one type of standing desk to a slightly different type, one type of exercise routine to a slightly different type, etc. If fine details of execution matter, the research literature often isn’t going to pick up on that.
(This would also explain why I could believe that, say, a study of accupuncture could find it ineffective for pain relief while one particular person going to a particular accupuncturist could genuinely experience a dramatic effect. If some accupuncturists are “real” while others are “fake”, modern medical research isn’t going to be able to distinguish them.)