What if some of the microorganisms that lived inside our ancestors for thousands of years are gradually disappearing from the human gut?

It's a fascinating possibility, and one that is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. As our diets, lifestyles and environments have changed, so too have the...

Why do some people develop a fever after a vaccination while others barely notice they've had one? Why do our immune systems sometimes react very differently to what appears to be the same challenge?

We usually think of these differences in terms of genetics, age or general health. But an intriguin...

We spend an enormous amount of time discussing what we should eat, how much we should eat and which foods are best for our metabolism. But there's another question that is becoming increasingly interesting to nutrition researchers: does it matter when we eat?

It turns out that our bodies don't proc...

What if some of the chemistry controlling your cholesterol isn't produced by your own body, but by bacteria living in your gut?

It sounds extraordinary, but a new study published in Nature has uncovered a fascinating connection between intestinal bacteria, cholesterol metabolism and the development...

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,...