31st August 2026 Newsletter Monday Statins are back in the headlines. Hello Reader, I can think of very few drugs that provoke opinions quite as strong as statins. GLP-1 medications are probably giving them a run for their money at the moment, but plenty of people will never need to consider taking a GLP-1. Statins, on the other hand, are something almost all of us will encounter eventually — either because we’re offered one ourselves, or because someone we know is. So when the results of a...
10 days ago • 4 min read
24th August 2026 Newsletter Monday Peggy Hello Reader, I was going to make a social media post about NAD+ and NMN last week. Then I got a puppy. So absolutely nothing happened. But perhaps Peggy did me a favour, because the more I thought about this subject, the more I realised it was bigger than a post. If you’ve spent any time in the longevity corners of the internet, you will probably have come across NAD+. In fact, if your algorithm senses you're looking at health supplements, you'll...
17 days ago • 4 min read
17th August 2026 Newsletter Monday You are more than data Hello Reader, I was reading a new research paper this weekend and, to be honest, it wasn’t especially surprising. It echoed what we’ve seen many times before. Losing excess weight is generally associated with improvements in health. But as always, there are caveats. Lose too much muscle along the way and some of those benefits begin to disappear. Exercise is one of the best ways of protecting against that. Good. Useful. Expected. It...
24 days ago • 3 min read
10th August 2026 Newsletter Monday What foods contain B12? Hello Reader, I read a story recently that I haven't been able to stop thinking about. Georgina Owen was 21, studying geography at Swansea University, on track for a first-class degree and extremely active. She was also vegan. In the summer of 2019, her family began to notice subtle changes in her behaviour. She became unusually irritable and her thinking didn't seem quite right. Then her mental health deteriorated frighteningly...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
3rd August 2026 Newsletter Monday In my next life, I will be a cowgirl Hello Reader, One of the things I hadn’t expected to spend so much of my holiday thinking about was… buying food. Not the actual food itself. I mean the buying of it. Before anyone starts, yes, America has some stereotypes for a reason. Bacon appears to be considered an acceptable side dish for absolutely everything, and I lost count of the number of products that tasted noticeably sweeter than their UK equivalent. But...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
20th July 2026 Newsletter Monday A cracking book Hello Reader, By the time you are reading this I will be in sunny Denver. But the path to getting away for a couple of weeks, has involved many lists. Lists of jobs to finish. Lists of things to pack. Lists of invoices to send. Tax to pay. Videos to record. Newsletters to write. Kids to organise. Plants to water. Passports to remember. Chargers to find. Then, naturally, I made another list so I wouldn’t forget any of the lists, plus a list for...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
13th July 2026 Newsletter Monday Hello Reader, I defy anyone to read these statistics in the BMJ and not feel a wave of disbelief. Over a million children in England were referred for mental health support last year. That’s almost double the number five years ago. It’s such an enormous figure that my first thought wasn’t, “We need bigger mental health services.” It was, what on earth has happened? As both a GP and a parent, this one hits hard. The BMJ described it as a mental health crisis....
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
6th July 2026 Newsletter Monday You will get going Hello Reader, One of the health stories doing the rounds this week is the NHS exploring a scheme that could reward people for walking regularly with shopping discounts or vouchers. Predictably, social media did what social media does. Within minutes there were claims that this was really about spying on people, mining for data, linking your walking data to your GP records, or even using it to decide whether you deserve benefits. As someone...
2 months ago • 3 min read
29th June 2026 Newsletter Monday The app will see you now Hello Reader, I’ve been thinking about an announcement that landed in my inbox this week. It will undoubtedly be the source of a lot of headlines for slow news days. The government has announced £85 million to fund twelve projects exploring new ways to tackle obesity, with artificial intelligence playing a central role in several of them. One of the projects is here on my own patch in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland, looking at...
2 months ago • 4 min read