Navigator for the peripheral-lifestyle cluster the telos admits on the same evidence terms as food or activity, kept peripheral by the Layer-1 ranking rather than by a category ban: the psychosocial exposures that reach physical health mainly through the HPA / allostatic (cortisol) channel (chronic stress, isolation, purpose, depression), and the light/sun (UV) exposure whose effect is opposite-signed across outcomes. Two through-lines run the whole cluster: most of the evidence is observational with the marker-vs-lever question open (a psychosocial state predicts mortality partly as a marker of underlying health, few are proven treatment targets), and the physical intersection — not mood or life-satisfaction as ends in themselves — is what earns each page its place.
Stress and the HPA / allostatic channel
- Allostatic Load and Mortality — nucleus of the
psychosocialcluster: whether cumulative multi-system stress physiology is a modifiable mortality lever or a prognostic marker to stratify with — the physiological spine the chronic-stress exposures share - Stress Management and Cardiometabolic Health — whether a structured stress-management program lowers blood pressure enough to matter, weighed against established BP levers (dual-domain; also in Cardiometabolic Risk Hub)
- Depression and Modifiable Exposures — which modifiable lifestyle exposures reduce depression, for whom and by how much — depression carried as a patient-important QoL outcome, not a mood end in itself
- Antidepressants for Depression — the drug facet of the depression cluster: what the antidepressant class does and does not do for acute MDD (Cipriani 2018 NMA, all 21 > placebo but SMD 0.30 modest, a scale-threshold surrogate at ~8 weeks); the standing-drug alternative to the lifestyle levers
Connection and meaning
- Social Connection and Mortality — poor social relationships (objective isolation vs subjective loneliness — two distinct exposures) raise all-cause mortality and incident CHD/stroke (RR ~1.3) via the HPA/allostatic channel; observational, causation unproven
- Purpose in Life and Mortality — a higher eudaimonic sense of purpose predicts lower all-cause mortality and CV events (RR 0.83) through the same cortisol channel; a marker not shown to be a lever, discriminant validity vs depression/connection incomplete
Light and sun (UV) exposure
- Sun Exposure UV and Health — nucleus of the
sun-uv-exposurecluster (concept): how much sun/UV to get when UV causes skin cancer yet sun-exposure habits associate with lower all-cause and cardiovascular mortality — UV has opposite-signed effects on different outcomes - Melanoma and UV Exposure — what pattern of UV/sun exposure causes cutaneous melanoma (intermittent burning vs cumulative dose are not one exposure), and whether sun protection reduces it
Drinking-water fluoride
- Fluoride and Health — nucleus of the
fluoridecluster (concept): fluoride is both a deliberately-added caries-prevention exposure and a suspected developmental neurotoxicant — a dose-stratified benefit/harm menu, of which the opening source (NTP 2024) lands only the harm arm and only above ~1.5 mg/L water fluoride - Fluoride and Child IQ — the dose-threshold decision: where a child-IQ decrement is established (moderate confidence >1.5 mg/L, unclear at the 0.7 mg/L US fluoridation dose), and how well the mostly-high-fluoride-region evidence transports to fluoridation levels
Drinking-water disinfection byproducts
- Disinfection Byproducts and Bladder Cancer — nucleus of the
disinfection-byproductscluster: lifetime trihalomethane (THM) exposure raises male bladder-cancer risk modestly (meta OR 1.51 at50 µg/L; null in women, null via ingestion — dermal/inhalation carries the signal), attributable to ~4.9% of EU bladder cancers — but a small effect dwarfed by smoking (OR 3.91) on near-universal low-level exposure, so a structural water-treatment lever, not an individual behaviour