2nd March 2026 Newsletter Monday Hello Reader, Last week I was driving along listening to the news announce that GPs will now have to guarantee same-day appointments for “urgent” cases in 90% of instances. I admit to shouting at the radio: “Define urgent!” My daughter asked me to calm down. Then I opened the BBC comments later and discovered half the country was shouting the same thing. So let’s talk about it calmly. Because on the surface, this sounds entirely reasonable. If something is...
7 days ago • 3 min read
23rd Feb 2026 Newsletter Monday Hello Reader, This article on the BBC caught my attention this morning. Not because it was outrageous, but because of the language. “Anti-inflammatory foods.” That phrase usually lives quite happily on Instagram next to green powders and discount codes. When the BBC starts using it, you know it has crossed into mainstream thinking. And to my medical brain, that term has always felt… weighty. If we are going to call something anti-inflammatory, I want noticeable...
14 days ago • 2 min read
16th Feb 2026 Newsletter Monday Grey matter needs challenge Hello Reader, I read a really interesting article in New Scientist yesterday about a dementia study. Most of these stories blur into one another, but this one stood out immediately because it followed people for 20 years. That’s rare. As usual, I read it with one question in mind: what can we reasonably learn from this that might change how we live? One of the frustrations with dementia research is time. Alzheimer’s disease (just one...
21 days ago • 3 min read
9th Feb 2026 Newsletter Monday Waiting for guidelines to update Hello Reader, Buried among the cancer headlines this week was a genuinely positive piece of research. The sort you’d miss if you blinked. It didn’t come with a scary percentage, a lifestyle villain, or a call to panic, which is probably why it slipped under the radar. A study was published which focused on a specific group of women: those whose periods stop because of low energy availability. That might be due to intense...
28 days ago • 2 min read
2nd Feb 2026 Newsletter Monday How much is enough though? Hello Reader, **“Men need to exercise twice as long as women”? Let’s calm down.** You may have seen the headline because it's not going away and it came up again in BBC Science magazine this month, 3 months after it was in The Guardian. “Men need to exercise twice as long as women to get the same heart benefits.” Which sounds dramatic. Slightly alarming. And, as usual, not quite how science works. So let’s slow it down and look at what...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
26th January 2026 Newsletter Monday Hello Reader, How often are you tempted by testing to see how healthy you are? Just this weekend I noticed 2 quite different options on the testing spectrum online. On one hand, NHS England has been publicising an expansion in genetic screening for inherited cancer risk. On the other, the private “health optimisation” market continues to grow - including Dr Rangan Chatterjee’s new Do Health app, offering blood tests alongside personalised lifestyle plans....
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
19th January 2026 Newsletter Monday Cheers Hello Reader, We’re half way through January, so if you’re reading this thinking “bit late to start Dry January” - you’re absolutely right. This isn’t a rallying cry or a last-minute recruitment drive. I’m more interested in the question Dry January keeps raising every year: Is it a fad… or is it quietly useful? Where did Dry January even come from? Dry January started just over a decade ago as a public health campaign. No products. No detox kits. No...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
12th January 2026 Newsletter Monday Not just any food... Hello Reader, January is when food suddenly becomes very loud. People change how they eat. Television obliges by resurrecting What Not To Eat–style programming ( Thanks Channel 4 but we've seen this years ago). Social media fear-mongers on UPFs. And, right on cue, the food industry smells opportunity. This week’s offering? Marks & Spencer launching a range of “nutrient-dense” foods aimed at people on GLP-1 injections. Oh, the magic of...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Monday 5th January 2026 Newsletter Monday Tempting? Hello Reader, Every few weeks there’s a familiar kind of article in The Times (or another broadsheet): glossy photos, soft lighting, a calm Scandinavian aesthetic, and a shiny private health clinic promising more than you get on the NHS. More data. More tests. More reassurance. More “control”. It taps neatly into a very modern anxiety - that if something is missed, it’s because you didn’t look hard enough. But more isn’t always better. And...
2 months ago • 2 min read