Leading scientist in the field of nutrition
The gut-brain connection is increasingly well-documented. From autism (1) to emotional well-being (2), multiple aspects of personality (3), disorders of affect and anxiety (4) and neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinsonism (5) and perhaps Alzheimer’s (6), it is abundantly clear that the bugs in our gut have major short-...
Almost all of the cells in your body have the same genes, but they display different forms and functions in different tissues because of epigenetic differences. Epigenetics is a fairly new science. The word was first coined in 1942 by Conrad Waddington, in whose Edinburgh lab my mother...
Sleep well last night? If so, you are apparently in a minority. The American Sleep Association, the Sleep Foundation and the American Association of Sleep Technologists all claim that over half of adults have a sleep disorder (ie 1). These dogs could just be barking in the night,...
First impressions are important, and a limp handshake is not a good calling card (1). It’s not particularly good news for you either, if you have one, because it is strongly associated with early death. Research in this area initially focused on poor handgrip as a prognostic for...
Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) comes with a difficult and shifting mix of behaviours, emotions and psychological traits. Lighter versions of BPD are manifest in Holden Caulfield (and probably his creator JD Salinger), and in Alice Klieg, the protagonist in the wonderfully off-kilter film Welcome to Me. A much...
The past, like the future, is unknown and largely unknowable. Just when you think you have it pinned down it wriggles free and assumes new forms. History, like science, is revisionism. Take D-day. One of the most amazing episodes on this most terrible of days was the ascent...
In 1813, it was a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. In 2022, not so much. Unbalanced sexual endocrinology driven by the modern diet and the indiscriminate use of endocrine disrupting chemicals, solipsism enabled...
Atrial fibrillation (AF), like a bad moon, is on the rise. Nutritional standards have fallen so low that within a single generation the age-adjusted prevalence of AF has quadrupled (1), a worrying trend that appears to be continuing (2-4). Even more concerning, the disease itself may be becoming...
The most terrifying nine words in the English language, according to president Ronald Reagan, are ‘I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help’. Nowhere is this more true than in the whacky world of nutrition. Let’s start with the egg, and let the chicks fall where they...
Cutting salt consumption reduces blood pressure at the population level, and reduces the risk of strokes. The Salt Substitute and Stroke Study just confirmed this (1). 21,000 rural Chinese with a history of hypertension and/or stroke were divided into two groups. The intervention group was given a low-sodium...