Editorial policy

Who writes it, and who checks it

Clinical content on this site is written and reviewed by Dr Tarang Jain Arora, Integrative and Metabolic Health Physician. Where a writer, editor or researcher has helped draft a page, the clinical reviewer is still the person accountable for what it says.

Every page carrying clinical content shows two things near the top or the foot of the page: the name of the clinician who reviewed it, and the date of that review. Those are not decoration. The same two facts are published in the page’s structured data as reviewedBy and lastReviewed, so search engines and other machine readers see exactly what you see. If a page has no named reviewer, it is not clinical content.

Dr Tarang Jain Arora is a registered medical practitioner in India. Her registration number and issuing State Medical Council are published on the About page so you can check them yourself on the National Medical Commission’s Indian Medical Register. Registration details: [medical registration number and council — to be confirmed before launch].

What we use as evidence

We start from the strongest available evidence and work down, and we say which level we are standing on when it matters.

• Systematic reviews and meta-analyses of randomised trials, where they exist for the question being asked.
• Guidelines from major bodies. For Indian practice that means the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and its diabetes and nutrition guidelines. Alongside those we read the World Health Organization (WHO), the American Diabetes Association (ADA), the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) and the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL), the Endocrine Society, and the relevant Indian specialty associations.
• Individual peer-reviewed studies — read in full, not from the abstract, and weighed by design, size and population.
• Clinical experience, named as such. When a suggestion comes from practice rather than from a trial, the page says so in plain words instead of dressing it up as evidence.

What we do not treat as evidence

• Anecdote. One person’s recovery, however striking, is not a finding.
• Material produced or funded by the supplement industry, including white papers, sponsored reviews and manufacturer “clinical studies” that were never independently replicated.
• A single small study on its own. A promising result in forty people is a reason to watch a question, not a reason to change what you eat, take or stop.
• Preprints and conference abstracts as a basis for advice. We may mention them as emerging work, clearly labelled.
• Wellness media, podcasts and social posts — including our own — treated as a source. If we cannot trace a claim to a study or a guideline, we do not publish it.

Why our guidance is adapted for India

Most of the research base in metabolic medicine was built in European and North American populations. Copying it across unchanged produces advice that is subtly wrong for Indian patients, so we adapt it in three specific ways and say when we have done so.

Body composition thresholds

South Asians develop insulin resistance, fatty liver and type 2 diabetes at lower body weights and lower BMIs than white European populations, with more visceral fat at the same BMI. Indian and WHO-Asia guidance therefore uses lower cut-offs for overweight, obesity and waist circumference than the familiar international numbers. Where a page gives a threshold, it gives the one used for Indian adults and says which body set it.

Diet

Advice that assumes a low-carbohydrate Western plate is close to useless against a real Indian thali. We write about the food people actually eat — rice, roti, dal, idli, poha, chai — and about vegetarian and Jain diets, festival and fasting patterns, and regional differences. Portion guidance is given in katoris and rotis where that is clearer than grams.

Laboratory reference ranges

Reference ranges differ between laboratories, between assay methods and between countries. An Indian lab report may use a different range for the same test than the one quoted in an American guideline. Where we discuss a test result, we say that the range printed on your own report is the one that applies to your sample, and we explain what the number means rather than telling you to act on it.

How often content is reviewed

Every clinical page is reviewed at least once every 12 months, and the review date on the page is updated whether or not the content changed. A review that changed nothing is still information: it tells you a clinician looked at the page this year and stands by it.

An out-of-cycle review is triggered by any of the following:

• A major guideline body updates its recommendation on a topic we cover.
• A drug or supplement we mention is restricted, withdrawn, or given a new safety warning by the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) or an equivalent regulator.
• A well-conducted trial or systematic review lands that materially changes the answer to a question we have answered.
• A reader, clinician or colleague reports an error — see corrections below.

Corrections

We get things wrong. When we do, we want to know quickly and fix it visibly.

To report an error, email [editorial contact email — to be confirmed before launch] with the page address and what you think is wrong. If you can point us at a source, that helps, but it is not required — “this does not match what my endocrinologist told me” is a perfectly good report.

How we handle it:

• Anything clinically significant is dealt with first. If a page could lead someone to harm, we take the claim down or correct it before we finish investigating, and restore it only once we are sure.
• Corrections are made in the open. A substantive change to clinical meaning — a threshold, a dose, a recommendation, a statement about risk — gets a dated correction note at the foot of the page saying what was changed and why.
• The review date is updated on every corrected page, in the visible byline and in the page’s structured data.
• Typos, broken links and rewording do not get a correction note. Marking every comma as a correction would bury the corrections that matter.
• We do not quietly delete pages to make an error disappear. If a page is withdrawn, the address will say that it was withdrawn.

How we make money, and what we will not take

Alitheau earns money in two ways: one-to-one consultations with Dr Tarang Jain Arora, and paid learning sessions. That is the whole list.

What we do not do:

• No pharmaceutical sponsorship, and no funding from any company that makes or sells a drug, device, test or supplement.
• No paid placements for supplements, protein powders, meal-kit services, diagnostics or clinics. We do not sell mentions.
• No affiliate links. Nothing on this site earns us a commission when you click it or buy through it.
• No advertising. There are no display ads and no advertising trackers on this site.
• No content written or edited by a sponsor, under any label — including “in partnership with” and “supported by”.

Recommending a consultation is itself a commercial interest, and we treat it as one. Educational pages are written to be useful whether or not you ever book. If any of this changes — a sponsorship, an affiliate arrangement, a commercial relationship of any kind — it will be disclosed at the top of every page it affects, not buried on this one.

How we use AI tools

We would rather be specific than reassuring, so: yes, AI tools are used in producing this site, and here is exactly where.

• Drafting and editing are human work. AI tools may be used for background tasks — summarising a long paper we have already selected, suggesting a clearer sentence, checking structure and readability, generating code for the website itself.
• AI is never a source. No clinical claim on this site comes from a language model. Claims are traced to the study or guideline, and the source is read by a person.
• Nothing is published unread. Dr Tarang Jain Arora reads every clinical page end to end before it goes live and before it goes live again after a substantive edit. There is no automated publishing path for clinical content.
• No AI-generated people, patients or results. We do not publish synthetic patient photographs, invented testimonials or generated before-and-after images.

If a page is ever produced in a way that differs from the above, the page will say so.

Where education stops and advice begins

Everything published here is general education. It describes how conditions work, what tests measure and what the evidence says for people in general. It cannot know your history, your medicines, your reports or your circumstances, so it cannot tell you what to do.

Personal advice happens in a consultation, where there is a history, an examination where needed, and a clinician taking responsibility for a plan made for you. Reading this site does not create a doctor–patient relationship; booking a consultation does. This distinction is set out in full in our medical disclaimer, which is worth reading before you act on anything here.

Talk to us about our content

Corrections, source queries, requests to cover a topic, or a complaint about something we have published: [editorial contact email — to be confirmed before launch].

Our terms of use cover how this content may be used, and our privacy notice explains what happens to anything you send us.