Blog

Sleep is increasingly recognised as far more important than scientists previously thought. I have heard sleep called ‘the tide that raises all health ships’ and that is with good reason. It positively influences your mood, ability to perform complex tasks, allows your muscles to grow, repairs tissues. It even helps fight infection – in one […]

Quick answer: Not directly on its own — but a specific set of genes that respond to how you live (diet, exercise, sleep) play a major role in how well you age. There’s a lot of interest in tests that claim to estimate your ‘biological age’ from a home saliva kit using DNA methylation — […]

Quick answer: Takotsubo cardiomyopathy (“broken heart syndrome”) is a stress-triggered condition where the heart’s tip temporarily balloons and stops squeezing properly, closely mimicking a heart attack on first presentation — but the coronary arteries are normal, and most people make a full recovery within a couple of months. We all know that stress can impact […]

There are occasionally times when patients crop up and you really need to think that little bit harder to work out what to do, and this case is just such a time. Some heart rhythm disturbances can be fatal, and this particular one can be, but is really rather rare. To help you understand the […]

I’m sure by now you will have appreciated that one of the key messages I try to deliver is that lifestyle changes can drastically move the needle on the risk of developing a wide range of diseases, and maximise the chances of living healthily for as long as possible. You may also think I’m a […]

Quick answer: Consistency, not intensity, is what actually changes long-term health — “little and often” beats occasional heroic effort and carries far less injury risk. If you’re trying to build a healthy habit, three things help: make it easy and accessible, write it down, and speak to yourself as kindly as you would to a […]

The recent tragic death of Dr Michael Mosley I’m sure gave many people cause to reflect. Here was someone who dedicated much of his life to preventative medicine, yet lost his life in a seemingly random and terribly unfortunate way. I could cite a number of other examples of doctors I know who have just […]

Happy Father’s Day! I’ve had a lovely day: bike ride and some yoga with my daughter, a few holes of golf with my son (who bought be some personalised golf balls with instructions not to lose them!) and will be having a bbq in the sunshine then watching the football. Pretty much a perfect day. […]

Well it really has been an extraordinary week for me! Very occasionally I get offers that are hard to turn down. A few months ago I was asked by a company that make pacemakers (amongst a great many other medical things) if they could show me around their factory and pick my brains. There have […]

You may know I’m a keen Arsenal fan, so whenever a story crops up involving the club I tend to take a look, and so it was this week with former Gunners mid-fielder Jack Wilshere. He is a British Heart Foundation ambassador, having been on a long journey with his young daughter who had surgery […]

I had a great time at last week’s conference in Lisbon. Sat on the flight home, I was reflecting on what were the most enjoyable bits.  I liked the ‘late breaking scientific sessions’, where researchers first let the scientific community know the results of their trials. There’s something about hearing new data, feeling like you […]

Quick answer: A meaningful part of dementia risk is modifiable. Treating blood pressure to a target of 120mmHg (rather than 140) can reduce dementia risk by around 20%, and other levers — treating hearing loss, staying socially connected, regular exercise, avoiding excess alcohol, and good sleep and nutrition — each move the odds further in […]

For over a decade, scientists have thought that if amyloid protein is the primary problem in dementia, the key to treatment must be drugs which reduce its production or stimulate its clearance from the brain. Initial efforts however, whilst they reduced the amount of protein, did little to improve clinical symptoms and outcomes.  Studies are […]

I’m sure by now you will have appreciated that one of the key messages I try to deliver is that lifestyle changes can drastically move the needle on the risk of developing a wide range of diseases, and maximise the chances of living healthily for as long as possible. You may also think I’m a […]

I hope you’ve been enjoying the sunshine this week? Hasn’t it made a difference?! I expect like many people I’ve taken to the garden, and have been planting plants, cutting grass, and trimming hedges. It’s very satisfying work, and rather nice to be outside and doing something different to my day job. Rather annoyingly however, […]

There are occasionally times when patients crop up and you really need to think that little bit harder to work out what to do, and this case is just such a time. Some heart rhythm disturbances can be fatal, and this particular one can be, but is really rather rare. To help you understand the […]

Quick answer: What matters more than simply living a long time is ‘healthspan’ — the number of years lived in good health. That should guide personal lifestyle choices (exercise remains the single biggest lever), and it also matters in medical decision-making, especially for very elderly or frail patients where doing everything medically possible isn’t always […]

Last week I talked about how stress can impact symptoms in the body, but today I want to tell  you about a recent case I saw of extreme stress causing heart failure. This particular condition crops up in the media from time to time. In this lady’s case, she had been having a rather large […]

Whenever I go on holiday I always seem to find myself frantically trying to tidy up loose ends beforehand. I doubt I’m alone in thinking there never seems to be enough time to get things done before a break, does that sound like you? At some point though you jut have to stop: the work […]

Some genetic conditions are caused by mutations in single genes, and clearly run in families. Others are more complex, with environmental factors influencing the behaviour of genes and modifying what is called the gene expression. There are many such factors, smoking, diet, alcohol to name a few common ones. Most people I expect have heard […]

I have had quite a few patients ask me recently if I would support them being prescribed semaglutide. You may not be familiar with the name, but you may well have heard of it as a weight loss wonder drug. The reason I thought I would write about it today is that the FDA (US […]

I’ve been on call this week and it’s been rather busy, particularly this weekend, and particularly with patients presenting to hospital with chest pain. Such patients usually have a blood test called a ‘troponin’, which is a blood enzyme which gets elevated in the context of any heart damage or inflammation. As such, we use […]

I have had quite a few questions from members about last week’s article on sleep, so thought I would answer them this week. Many questions related to whether it mattered if sleep length varied. My first comment then is that the sleep duration quoted in trials and so on are averages. We will all have […]