When we think about biological inheritance, we usually think about DNA. We inherit a particular sequence of genetic letters from our parents, containing variants that influence everything from eye colour to height, cholesterol metabolism and susceptibility to certain diseases. Apart from the occasio...

Anyone who has repeatedly lost weight and watched it gradually return will recognise the frustration. The first diet appears to work, normal life eventually resumes, some or all of the weight comes back and another attempt begins. After enough repetitions, it is understandable that people start wond...

Gut-health advice has developed a rather neat little story over the last decade. Eat plenty of fibre, feed your good bacteria, avoid doing things that encourage the bad ones and, with a little luck and perhaps a suitably expensive probiotic, your microbiome will flourish.

It is an appealing idea be...

Pharmaceutical treatment of obesity has changed the landscape of healthcare drastically. Within a remarkably short period, drugs such as semaglutide have moved from specialist diabetes clinics into everyday conversation, while the extraordinary commercial and cultural success of these medicines has ...

Few areas of longevity research have generated quite as much excitement as senescent cells. They have acquired the wonderfully dramatic nickname “zombie cells”, are routinely presented as one of the villains of biological ageing, and have spawned an expanding market of supplements claiming to help t...

For decades, we have largely described food by breaking it down into its constituent parts. Calories, protein, carbohydrate, fat, fibre, vitamins and minerals are measured, printed neatly on the back of the packet and used to tell us something about the nutritional value of what we are about to eat....

This is one that always gets my goat. Simple measurements like weight on the scale or even BMI (Banal, Meaningless, Irrelevant - that is my nickname for it) serve as little more than sticks to beat ourselves with. 

For decades we have been conditioned to regard body weight as one of the great arbit...

Ultra-processed food has become a massive conversation piece lately. If you ever want to get a group of healthcare professionals bickering like Tom and Jerry after 7 coffees, then just bring up this subject and watch the fireworks. It is a hotbed. Depending on which side of the debate you encounter,...

The idea that we possess two different ages has become one of the most compelling concepts in longevity science. There is our chronological age, determined simply by the number of years we have been alive, and then there is our supposed biological age, an attempt to quantify how rapidly the tissues ...

NMN is definitely one of the most talked about supplements in recent times. It is a supplement that I personally take every single day and on a lot of metrics, it is one that has really moved the needle for me and one I would be loathe to remove from my protocol. It is marketed as an NAD+ booster an...

The longevity field within nutrition is certainly advancing at a rate of knots and there are all manner of practices that promise the key to eternal youth. We are told that fasting can switch on our longevity genes, that certain supplements can slow biological ageing, that particular foods activate ...

Bloating is one of the most common digestive complaints, yet it is also one of the most poorly understood. For some people it means feeling excessively full after eating. For others it describes pressure, abdominal discomfort, excessive gas or a visibly distended abdomen that can change dramatically...