✦ Free Interactive Assessment
Health Pattern Finder — Which Body Systems Need Attention?
40 questions across 7 body systems. Scored clinically to identify your priority patterns — HPA axis, gut, hormones, blood sugar, immune, brain, and detoxification — with personalised next steps. Two minutes, no email required.
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New This Month
September & October 2026
New this month: fasting and cold plunges graded both ways, cold season, what to do when you’re hurt, blood clots, protein powder and injury nutrition.
Why Can’t I Handle My Drink Anymore?
The alcohol your gut makes itself, why clearing a drink is an energy problem, what red wine really does for Akkermansia, and why drink-free days — grouped together — do the heavy lifting.
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Fasting: Who It Helps, Who It Harms
Intermittent fasting and time-restricted eating graded: what it adds beyond eating less, who should be careful, and why the “8-hour window” headlines need a second look.
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Cold Plunges: Who They Help, Who They Harm
Recovery, stress, brown fat and the “dopamine hit” graded, why a plunge straight after lifting can blunt your gains, and who should be careful in cold water.
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Cold Season: The First 24 Hours, and the Habits That Set You Up to Catch Everything
Saline spray, zinc, salt water and honey graded; why vitamin C and D won’t keep colds away; sleep, stress and party season; train or rest; and when to get help.
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Hurt? Who to See, When, and What Actually Helps
The NHS warning signs, ice, heat and painkillers graded, physio vs osteopath vs chiropractor vs massage, NHS physio self-referral in Scotland, and when a scan helps.
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Blood Clots: What Raises Your Risk, What Lowers It
The NHS warning signs for DVT and PE, travel, the pill and HRT (patches vs tablets), flight stockings graded, exercise after a clot, and the supplements to tell your prescriber about.
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As Many Reps as Possible, or as Many Good Reps?
Short squats, half press-ups and a treadmill rail you lean on: what full-range and handrail trials show the shortcut costs, and what a good rep asks of you.
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Injured? What Food Can and Can’t Do for Healing
What a cast does to muscle and how fast, why leucine failed twice, the one small trial each for creatine in rehab and omega-3, collagen for tendons, and concussion, with the NHS red flags.
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Protein Powder: Win, Loss or Better Than Nothing?
Whether it’s a win depends on what it replaces. Muscle, detox, immunity and gut claims graded; whey vs pea vs beef; lead and protein spiking; and the three I recommend, with their test results.
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Making Weight: Cutting for a Fight
How fighters make weight, what dehydration does to performance, how to grade the ISSN’s sauna and hot-bath guidance, and what nobody yet knows about repeated cuts.
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Under-Fuelled: Energy Availability and RED-S
What low energy availability does to hormones, bone and training, who it affects (men and recreational exercisers too), and what the screening tools can and can’t tell you.
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Sports Supplements: The Short List That Works
Caffeine, creatine, nitrate, bicarbonate and beta-alanine: what the IOC and the trials support, for which kind of effort, what the trials used, and the contamination risk on labels you can’t read.
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Don’t Hold It In: Coughs and Sneezes
Why you shouldn’t hold in a sneeze, what cough medicines, honey and steam actually do, how long a cough should last, and when to see a GP.
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Nattokinase: What It Does, and Who Shouldn’t Take It
Sold to thin the blood and clear spike protein and microclots. What the one-dose and three-year trials found, how the claims grade, and the bleeding risk.
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Damage Limitation Exercises
Making good decisions about exercise, food and supplements when real life won’t follow the plan: why one miss doesn’t matter, ideal/target/minimum plans, which compromises cost little and which cost a lot, and when rest is the right call.
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Why Rocky Still Makes Me Cry
Why a film theme brings a 55-year-old former boxer close to tears: music and dopamine, conditioning, the reminiscence bump and kama muta, graded, and whether letting it out is good for you.
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Beyond “Your Cholesterol”: The Heart Markers That Matter, How Often to Check Them, and What Moves Them
ApoB, LDL, Lp(a), blood pressure, HbA1c and hs-CRP: what each tells you, the bands in both units, how often to check, what moves each one, and where the statin critics are right and where they go too far.
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What Your Class Can’t See
Spin, Pilates, yoga and Peloton each train a slice of what your body can do. What tends to get left out, why it matters more after 40, and what one-to-one training adds.
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Same Exercise, Different Animal
One everyday exercise trained many ways, four pairings and a power progression: what each adds, who it suits, and what the evidence does and doesn’t say.
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Why Do You Move? The Three Exercise Mindsets, and Why Yours Matters
Tick-box, movement as part of life, or training for something. Any of them beats sitting, but the mindset decides whether you get better, stay unhurt and keep going for decades.
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“I’m Not Getting Any Younger”: The Bladder
Leaking, urgency and getting up at night. The most effective fixes are free and unglamorous. Saw palmetto fails its trials; cranberry holds up for the right person.
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“I’m Not Getting Any Younger”: Knees
Age plays a part in sore knees, but a smaller one than you’ve been told. What works, what’s sold instead, and the treatments, conventional and natural, that didn’t hold up.
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Your Immune System Is Listening: Stress, Sleep, Loneliness and What Actually Helps
How stress, short sleep and loneliness change your odds of catching a cold, healing a wound and responding to a new challenge. What’s been tested to help, and how strong each piece of evidence is.
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Better Out Than In? Burping, Farting and Holding It In
How much wind is normal, why burps and farts differ, what holding it in actually does, and when it’s worth testing. Every claim graded, including the testing I sell.
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Topping Up a Shortfall, or Taking a Drug?
Magnesium for migraine, nicotinamide for skin: when a vitamin or mineral is being used as a drug, what the trials actually showed, and the questions nobody asks.
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Dizzy, Foggy, No Headache: The Migraine That Hides in Plain Sight
Vertigo, fog and motion sensitivity with little or no headache can be migraine. How it’s diagnosed, which diet and supplement claims hold up, and what testing adds.
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Your Result Went Up. Did Anything Actually Change?
Two blood tests, two different numbers. How clinical chemistry tells a real change from normal day-to-day wobble, with my own Lp(a) result as the example.
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Living in the Resistance Stage: Mothers and Stress
Selye’s stages, Sapolsky’s zebras, and why so much self-care sold to mothers never touches the stress itself. With an honest correction about “adrenal fatigue”.
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The Test Isn’t the Investigation
You can order the tests yourself. What you can’t order is the thinking that connects them, and knowing which “abnormal” result to ignore. Why more results aren’t more answers, with the grades applied to my own tests too.
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Beyond Antibodies: The Complement System Nobody Talks About
Around 30 blood proteins do much of the immune system’s work and most people have never heard of them. What complement does, how it goes wrong, what C3 and C4 can and can’t tell you, why an IgG food test can’t see the difference that matters, and what the evidence says about curcumin and complement after vaccination.
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The Many Steps Between “I Want a Flat Stomach” and Actually Getting One
The most common goal I hear hides at least four different problems: fat, bloating, posture and a stretched abdominal wall. Why the stomach is often the last place fat leaves, why crunches don’t fix it, and the order that actually works.
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Who Decides What’s Normal?
The numbers on your blood test aren’t discoveries — they’re decisions. Blood pressure, BMI, prediabetes, thyroid, bone and cholesterol thresholds, where the critics are right, where they stand on shoogly pegs, and why my own functional ranges deserve the same scrutiny.
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Forever Chemicals in Your Medicine Cabinet: What’s Real and What Isn’t
A new study found PFAS-free alternatives for 87% of fluorinated medicines. What it actually shows about TFA and drinking water, why medicines are only about 1% of the problem, and why it isn’t a reason to change your prescription.
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Your Nervous System Is Having a Moment Online. Here’s What Holds Up.
Polyvagal theory, breathwork, HRV training and “co-regulation”, graded against the evidence — and what a test can and can’t tell you about your stress response.
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Your Coffee Isn’t a Delivery System
CBD, butter, mushrooms, maca, chaga, cinnamon, ashwagandha and turmeric in your coffee: what the evidence says, and who should skip them.
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What Actually Happened to Cadbury Dairy Milk — and What Didn’t
The bar is smaller and there is palm fat in it. But the palm-oil scandal came before the takeover, Somerdale was Cadbury’s own closure plan, and the health effect is smaller than you’d think.
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LDL, Statins and Heart Disease: What the Evidence Actually Supports
Both camps overcook their case. Six questions graded by evidence, four kinds of statin patient, and where my own “health over medicine” instinct is backed by the evidence — and where it isn’t.
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Why Can’t I Lose Fat? Twelve Reasons, Graded by Evidence
Diet, exercise, sleep, medications, cortisol, thyroid, hormones, neurotransmitters, toxins, gut and metabolism — each graded honestly, including the parts of my own field that are ahead of the evidence.
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You Can Only Train What You Can Feel
“My arms aren’t strong enough.” Why body awareness comes before fitness, where movement skill gaps start, what that does to self-belief, and why I dislike the phrase “ladies’ press-ups.”
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Abs Are Made in the Kitchen. Health Isn’t.
Energy compensation averages 28% — only about 72% of what you burn exercising turns into calories actually burned that day. But a fit person with obesity carries roughly half the mortality risk of an unfit person of normal weight. Both camps are right, about different outcomes, and neither says which one they mean.
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Prostate Screening: The Decision Nobody Can Make For You
Britain changed its position in May 2026. Twenty-three years of ERSPC data show one prostate cancer death prevented for every 456 men invited — and twelve men diagnosed for every death averted. The British CAP trial found screening detected more low-grade disease and no more of the aggressive kind. Both findings are real.
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Your Histamine Test Probably Didn’t Tell You Anything
The DAO blood test missed 98% of cases at the strict cut-off. Only a third of the foods on low-histamine lists are justified by their actual histamine content. And in a blinded challenge, 62.7% of patients reacted to placebo.
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If You Can’t Check It, It Isn’t Evidence
A course can teach you to interpret evidence, or it can be the evidence. The first is legitimate. The second is a closed loop — and the only people who could challenge the claims are the ones who paid to be taught them.
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The Fibrosis That Resolves Itself
94% of untreated patients recover to the range of their other shoulder. Which makes frozen shoulder a treatment-claim factory — anything applied during that window gets the credit. Including anything I did to my own.
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Binders: What’s Actually Evidenced
Charcoal, zeolite, clay, chlorella. One of them has a decent human trial, and what it shows is absorption prevention rather than mobilisation. Plus the medication interaction risk nobody selling them mentions.
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What “Medical Device Certified” Actually Means
A quality management system is an audit of how something is manufactured, not a trial of whether it works. And for Class I devices, the manufacturer assesses themselves. Including where I have to hold myself to the same standard on lab accreditation.
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What I Got Wrong
Sweat does not detoxify you. Dry brushing does not move lymph. And one careless line in a bulleted list could have been read as advice to stop an antidepressant. Five corrections from a protocol I wrote in November, published rather than quietly edited.
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Why More of a Thing Usually Does Nothing
Bone needs load, not more calcium. Muscle needs effort, not a slower clock. Grip strength is a marker, not a lever. And for curcumin, the delivery system is the intervention. Four worked examples of the same mistake.
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Your Scan Is Probably Normal For Your Age
Two papers from the same group, same journal, same year. One shows degenerative findings are everywhere in people without pain. The other shows they are still more common in people who hurt. Almost nobody cites both.
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Vitamin D and Multiple Sclerosis: Strong Evidence, Wrong Question
Genetic studies support vitamin D as a causal factor in whether someone develops MS. Three randomised trials failed to show it changes the disease once established. Both findings are real, and the distinction keeps getting lost.
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Cardiac Rehab Works. Then It Stops.
High-certainty evidence for preventing further heart attacks, less certain on mortality than commonly claimed, and around 40% of eligible people never attend. Every programme has an end date, after which nothing is waiting.
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After Stroke, Half the Problem Is Deconditioning
Peak oxygen uptake in survivors sits far below expected, and stays there. That is not the stroke damaging heart and lungs. It is the one part of the picture that reliably responds to work.
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They Told Him It Couldn't Heal
The outer third of the meniscus can heal. The inner two-thirds largely cannot. Almost nobody is told which they have — and that single fact changes what it can’t heal means for them.
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The Most Compelling Explanation Nobody Has Been Able to Prove
The Cell Danger Response explains why some people never recover from an illness that should have passed. It’s elegant, mechanistically coherent, and after fifteen years the entire human evidence for treating it is one trial of ten children. I found it convincing for years. Here’s why I stopped teaching it.
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Your Body Was Talking Before the Symptoms Started
A symptom isn’t the beginning of a problem — it’s the point where a problem got loud enough to notice. Ferritin falls before haemoglobin. Insulin rises before glucose. p-tau217 is raised twenty years before symptoms. We can now demonstrate the drift rather than assert it.
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The Protocol: Why Dose, Form and Timing Decide Everything
The same iron dose absorbed roughly four times better with orange juice than with coffee — about twenty milligrams difference from one tablet. Coffee cut absorption 54%. Afternoon dosing was 37% lower than morning. Most of what decides whether a supplement works isn’t on the label.
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They Built an AI to Predict 1,000 Diseases. HbA1c Still Beat It.
Delphi-2M forecasts over a thousand diseases decades ahead, trained on 400,000 people and validated on 1.9 million. MILTON predicts 3,213 conditions from blood biomarkers — outperforming polygenic risk scores. And for diabetes, a blood test from the 1970s beat the transformer.
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Smoke Point Is the Wrong Number
Every cooking oil chart ranks fats by smoke point — a measurement judged by eye that mostly reflects how refined an oil is, not how well it handles heat. Extra virgin olive oil has a lower smoke point than refined seed oils and produces fewer harmful aldehydes at 190°C. Both are true.
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Same Movement, Opposite Verdict
A boxer throws ten thousand jabs and nobody worries. Put a loaded bar overhead through a similar range and it lands on every list of exercises to avoid. Why forbidden-exercise lists fail, why “knees behind toes” turns out to be a fifty-year-old myth, and what I watch instead.
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The Alzheimer’s Blood Test Is Real. You Probably Shouldn’t Have One.
A single blood draw now detects Alzheimer’s pathology as accurately as a lumbar puncture — and primary care doctors went from 61% diagnostic accuracy to 91% using it. But every study was in people who already had symptoms. If you’re well and worried, this isn’t the reassurance you’re hoping to buy.
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I Read the Peptide Studies So You Don’t Have To
In July an FDA advisory panel voted to recommend six peptides for compounding — overruling the agency’s own scientists, who’d advised against all seven. One member said during the vote: “I’m voting on something here, but I don’t know what that something is.” What it means, and what the evidence actually shows.
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Why Your Health Guru Might Be Half Right
The most persuasive health misinformation isn’t a lie — it’s a true mechanism carrying a conclusion nobody could test. One question separates them, and the uncomfortable part is that it works just as well on people you agree with. Including me.
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How to Check a Health Claim in Five Questions
A reference list makes a product look serious — that’s what it’s for. But a citation only tells you a paper exists, not that it says what the label implies. Five questions that close the gap, with worked examples of claims that failed, including several of my own.
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Food as Medicine — Plants That Work Across Seven Systems
Organised by mechanism, not by plant. Pomegranate is a receptor story, not a menopause story — and roughly a third of people lack the gut bacteria to get the effect at all. Ten plants graded honestly, including two popular claims that don’t survive the primary literature.
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Food as Medicine — Printable Reference Guide
The one-page companion table. Ten plants, the compound actually responsible, the mechanism, an A–D evidence grade and the specific caveat attached to each. Built for clinic use.
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Your Thoughts Have a Blood Test
Chronic threat appraisal keeps the HPA axis switched on, and the axis sits upstream of a great deal. Which downstream links actually hold, which are extrapolated from critical illness, and why psychological readiness belongs in the assessment rather than the conversation afterwards.
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Why Your Last Health Plan Failed, And It Wasn’t Willpower
Personality genuinely predicts whether people follow a health plan — across 99 studies and 107,000 people. But not through the archetypes practitioners invent. What actually predicts adherence, why it’s context-dependent, and the trait that turns out to be trainable.
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The Abnormal Result That Might Be Protecting You
Up to one in ten people carry a gene variant that gets a liver marker flagged in red. It isn’t a liver problem — on current evidence it looks like an advantage. What the bilirubin evidence shows, the drug-clearance flip side nobody mentions, and one popular claim with no published basis at all.
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Your Mood Isn’t a Serotonin Deficiency
The chemical imbalance story was never the science — and the story replacing it is being oversold in the opposite direction. The cofactor map, where inflammation diverts tryptophan down the kynurenine pathway, and an honest warning about what this article is not.
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How Eccentric Exercise Opens a New World of Fitness
Walking downstairs twice a week for twelve weeks: 34% more strength, 13% lower LDL, 10% lower resting heart rate, 6% more bone density — while working at a lower heart rate than the group walking up. Why a leg exercise moves systemic markers at all, and why the brakes are what fail first.
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Why I Won’t Let My Clients Run Until They Can Walk Properly
A position I’ve held for nearly forty years, checked against the injury-prediction literature — which does not support it. Thirty prospective studies, 3,404 runners, over 100 variables tested, almost all null. What survives, and what I’m withdrawing.
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Monthly Series
Supplement · Herb · Fungi · Recipe
Deep clinical profiles published monthly — one supplement, one medicinal herb, one medicinal fungus, and one functional recipe. The mechanism, the evidence, the form that matters, and when testing confirms the indication.
Zinc — Does It Actually Shorten a Cold?
Probably no use for preventing colds; maybe two days off one, if the lozenge actually releases zinc. Why the trials disagree, what to look for on the label, the copper problem with long-term high doses, and why a zinc test is harder than it sounds.
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Scotch Broth, Built for Zinc
Lamb, barley and split peas, soaked overnight. The zinc per bowl from the UK food tables, how protein and phytate change what you absorb, and a plant-based version that is honest about the numbers.
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Valerian — The Sleep Herb That Keeps Failing Its Tests
Decades of trials, and the better the trial, the less it finds. The 600-fold spread in what products contain, the valerian–hops question, the rare liver cases, and what works better for insomnia.
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Chaga — No Trials, and Three Kidneys
Sold as a winter immune tea, with no published human trials behind it and three case reports of serious kidney damage from its oxalate. What is known, what is sold, and who should avoid it.
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Vitamin D — Everyone Takes It. Almost Nobody Measures It.
VITAL found nothing for cancer, heart disease, depression or fractures — and a 22% reduction in autoimmune disease that almost nobody quotes. D-Health used a monthly bolus in an already-replete population and found a cancer signal running the wrong way. Includes a correction to a range this site’s own AI was using until August.
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Mackerel and Mushroom Traybake
Built on the same mechanism as this month’s supplement profile. One tray, thirty-five minutes, and the two foods that genuinely carry vitamin D — with the arithmetic on how far a plate of food actually gets you in a Scottish October.
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Turkey Tail — The Trial Evidence Is Real. It Is Not About the Capsule.
An 8,009-patient survival result, a prescription drug extracted from mycelium, and a supplement industry that sorts its shelves by the opposite argument. Read from the full paper, including the sentence in its abstract that is wrong and the two largest trials that found nothing.
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Elderberry — The Best Trial Found Nothing. The Shelf Hasn’t Noticed.
Two small flu trials, one industry-funded cold study and a meta-analysis of 180 people built the reputation. The one adequately powered trial found no benefit. The evidence, who funded it, and the safety step home syrup must not skip.
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Quercetin — The Mast Cell Stabiliser Hay Fever Season Actually Needs
More effective than cromolyn in head-to-head lab comparisons of mast cell mediator release. The calcium-influx mechanism, the dose that matches the trials, and why timing it three weeks before pollen season beats reaching for it on the day.
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Milk Thistle — Almost 2,000 Years as a Liver Tonic, and the Mechanism Finally Caught Up
Silymarin's Nrf2 upregulation, membrane stabilisation and anti-fibrotic action. The dose the NAFLD trials used, the bioavailability problem plain capsules don't solve, and the cholestyramine timing issue worth knowing.
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Lion's Mane — The Mushroom That Makes Your Brain Make Its Own Growth Factor
Hericenones and erinacines don't act as neurotransmitters — they stimulate the brain's own NGF synthesis. The Mori 2009 trial, the fruiting body versus mycelium-on-grain quality question, and an honest look at where the human evidence is still thin.
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The Red Onion and Apple Bowl — A Functional Recipe for Hay Fever Season
Red onion, apple skin-on, capers and watercress — built around real dietary quercetin sources, paired with this month's supplement profile. Clinical food that tastes like something you'd choose anyway.
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Ashwagandha — The Adaptogen That Changes What Stress Does to Your Hormones
KSM-66 versus Sensoril. The cortisol:DHEA-S ratio. Why ashwagandha recalibrates the HPA axis rather than simply reducing stress. When DUTCH data confirms the indication and the form that produces trial-equivalent results.
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Oregano Oil — The Antimicrobial Hiding in Plain Sight
Carvacrol and thymol. Anti-biofilm activity against Candida. Why the form determines whether it reaches the colon. When GI-MAP confirms the indication and how to use it without disrupting the microbiome.
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Reishi — What the Trials Show, and the Liver Warning
Small trials for fatigue, poor-quality trials alongside cancer treatment, no benefit for cholesterol or blood sugar, untested for sleep and stress, and case reports of liver injury. With what the trials used.
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Digestive Enzyme Soup — A Functional Recipe for Low PE-1
Bone broth, ginger, bitter greens, turmeric. Built around the GI-MAP PE-1 finding for exocrine pancreatic insufficiency. Bile stimulation, gastric motility, and gut barrier repair. The pre-meal ACV ritual included.
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CoQ10 and Statins — What the Trials Show
Should you take CoQ10 with a statin? Three meta-analyses disagree, and most muscle symptoms on statins aren’t caused by the statin. What the trials used, graded.
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Dandelion — The Field Medicine Everyone Walks Past
Liver bitter, bile stimulant, prebiotic inulin, anti-inflammatory flavonoids. The German field medicine tradition, Klinghardt’s use, Ki Sciences tincture — and the honest stem sap warning.
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Medicinal Mushrooms — What the Evidence Shows
Lion’s mane, reishi, cordyceps, turkey tail and chaga: what each is used for, how good the evidence is, the safety points, and how to read a label. The guide to the Fungi of the Month series.
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Recipe of the Month — Food as Functional Medicine
Bone broth with ginger and miso. Warm bitter greens. Spiced lentil tray bake. Dandelion, walnut and warm bacon salad. Clinical food that tastes like something you’d choose.
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The Research Desk
Monthly literature reviews of emerging and popular topics in functional health research. We go to the primary evidence, assess quality honestly, and translate findings into clinical application. No hype. No dismissal.
Blood & Lab Testing
The Metabolic Natures Programme — Eat Right for Your Specific Biochemistry
Six distinct metabolic types. One personalised food guide, menu plan, and recipe library built specifically for yours. The programme that identifies your type, delivers your plan, and supports implementation through AIdan — replacing what used to require 6–12 weekly sessions. From £265.
Heat, Cold and Infrared — What the Evidence Shows for Sauna, Cold Exposure and Far-IR
Finnish men who used a sauna more often had fewer cardiac deaths over 20 years: a strong association, not proof. An hour in 14°C water raised noradrenaline about 530% in one small study; how long it lasted wasn’t measured. Far-infrared has small heart-failure studies. Graded honestly.
Sound, Light and Colour as Therapy — What the Evidence Actually Shows
Photobiomodulation via red/NIR light has a documented molecular mechanism in cytochrome c oxidase and hundreds of RCTs. Bright light therapy is NICE-recommended for SAD. Music therapy in dementia has better evidence than most pharmacological alternatives. Colour therapy has almost none. Not all light therapy is the same.
What's Really in Your Supplement — The Quality Crisis Nobody Advertises
In October 2005 I sat in a room and heard a supplement manufacturer explain that capsule doses are set by machine flow rates, not therapeutic doses. The raw ingredients sometimes come from heavy-metal-contaminated regions. The herbal dose on the bottle may be a fraction of what traditional medicine considers therapeutic. Twenty years later, the conversation is identical.
The Bile Story — Why Fat Digestion Is About So Much More Than Fat
Bile is the liver's primary detoxification excretion route, a microbiome regulator via antimicrobial action, a signalling molecule activating FXR and TGR5 receptors, and the only way fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K reach your cells. Biliary stasis is common, underdiagnosed, and clinically consequential far beyond gallstones.
The Molecules Your Gut Bacteria Make — And Why They Run Your Biology
Butyrate, propionate, acetate. Short-chain fatty acids are the primary output of a healthy gut microbiome. Butyrate is colonocyte fuel, the most potent endogenous HDAC inhibitor, the primary regulator of intestinal permeability, and a direct modulator of neuroinflammation. Without prebiotic fibre, you produce very little of it.
The Electromagnetic Environment — What Non-Ionising Radiation Does to Human Biology
This is not a 5G conspiracy post. It is a clinical assessment of the published evidence on biological effects of non-ionising radiation — VGCC activation, melatonin suppression, oxidative stress, the NTP carcinogenicity finding, and practical mitigation that actually works.
Five a Day Isn't Enough — The Flavanol Gap in Plant-Rich Diets
The COSMOS trial: 500mg/day flavanols reduced cardiovascular mortality by 27%. Only 19% of people eating five or more fruit and vegetable servings daily reach this threshold. A banana and a carrot don't count. Here's what does — and why the specific plants matter as much as the number of servings.
The 90-Minute Rule — What a 30-Year Study of 147,000 Adults Tells Us About Strength Training
13% lower all-cause mortality. 19% lower cardiovascular mortality. 27% lower neurological disease mortality. All from 90 minutes of resistance training per week — with no additional longevity benefit above 120 minutes. The 27% neurological figure is larger than any pharmacological prevention effect currently available.
Why the Supplement You're Taking Probably Isn't Working
The label tells you what went into the capsule. Bioavailability determines how much reaches your cells. Magnesium oxide vs glycinate. Cyanocobalamin vs methylcobalamin. Folic acid vs methylfolate. Ubiquinone vs ubiquinol. A clinical guide to the form hierarchy that the industry doesn't want you to know about.
Before You Start an Antidepressant: What Nutrition Can and Can’t Do
B12, folate, homocysteine, zinc, omega-3, vitamin D, iron, thyroid and CRP graded: which checks are worth asking about, what the trials show, and where the evidence runs out. Antidepressants work for many people; this isn’t a case against them.
The Sweetener Problem — What They're Not Telling You About Sugar-Free
Aspartame WHO carcinogen classification. Sucralose genotoxic metabolites. Saccharin gut microbiome disruption. Erythritol cardiovascular signal. Agave higher fructose than sugar. A clinical assessment of seven sweeteners — artificial and "natural" — and what the evidence actually shows.
There Is No Such Thing as a Health Plan for Everyone
Roger Williams documented biochemical individuality in 1956. Nutrigenomics, microbiome science, epigenetics, and metabolomics have confirmed it at the molecular level since. Here's why your health is about you, now, specifically — and why nothing generic will ever fully work.
The Supermarket Health Aisle — What's Actually In It
Protein water, CBD water, vitamin water, collagen drinks, kombucha, probiotic shots, adaptogen lattes, immunity shots. Eight product categories assessed on dose adequacy, ingredient quality, and clinical value. Most of it isn't worth what you're paying.
What Goes Into Your Body at the Dentist — And What to Do About It
Mercury amalgam, BPA composite resins, epinephrine anaesthetics, and a mouthwash that raises blood pressure by destroying your oral microbiome. Plus a clinical pre and post dental protocol using chlorella, NAC, selenium, and oral probiotics.
Before a Dental Implant: Vitamin D, Smoking and What Else Matters
Most implants succeed. Smoking, gum disease, diabetes, bone medicines and low vitamin D graded: what the reviews show, and what’s worth sorting out before the appointment.
Before IVF: What Nutrition Can and Can’t Do
Vitamin D, folic acid, CoQ10, inositol, antioxidants for women and men, and thyroid graded: what the trials show, the HFEA success figures, and what the NHS basics still cover.
Before Your Operation: What Nutrition Can and Can’t Do
Anaemia and iron, vitamin C, zinc, vitamin D, protein and fish oil graded: what the routine checks cover, what the trials show, and what’s worth sorting out before the day.
What's Actually In Your Electrolyte
Seeking Health, Quinton, Aldi, Humantra — four electrolyte products assessed on dose adequacy, ingredient forms, and clinical value. The one with the most impressive label has the weakest formulation.
What Your Aesthetics Clinic Isn't Telling You
Microneedling stimulates collagen synthesis. Botox relaxes the muscles that create lines. These procedures work — but the nutritional and hormonal foundation on which they're performed determines how well, how long, and how cleanly.
What Thirty-Seven Years of Working With People Taught Me
Ten principles that hold across every case and every year. Not mechanisms. Not protocols. The things that are true about health, about the clinical encounter, and about what it takes to actually help someone get better.
Food Is Information, Not Just Fuel
Calories are the least interesting thing about food. Every meal is a set of biochemical instructions — and the response to those instructions varies profoundly between individuals. Why the same diet produces such different results in different people.
The Gut Is Not a Separate Department
The gut connects to the brain, the immune system, the hormonal system, and the metabolic system. Treating it as a separate department is the first diagnostic mistake. The GI-MAP tells you what the gut is actually doing.
The Thyroid Is the Last Thing They Test and the First Thing They Miss
TSH alone cannot tell you whether your thyroid is working properly. Free T3, TPO antibodies, thyroglobulin antibodies — these are the markers that reveal Hashimoto's and functional hypothyroidism that TSH misses entirely.
The Bioidentical Hormone Conversation Nobody Is Having
A deficient hormone is not simply a gap to fill. It is information. Progesterone, cortisol, how stress affects sex hormones, Ray Peat's contribution, and why investigating before supplementing changes everything.
What's Actually In a Vape — And Why Teenagers Are the Experiment
Vaping was sold as harm reduction for smokers. In teenagers who never smoked, it is something else — a nicotine delivery system applied to developing brains that are exquisitely vulnerable to precisely what it delivers.
Why Women Are Sicker, Diagnosed Later, and Treated Worse
80% of autoimmune disease occurs in women. The gender health gap is documented, real, and consequential. The research gap, the reference range problem, perimenopause, and what functional investigation offers that conventional medicine doesn't.
Stress Is a Biochemistry Problem, Not a Willpower Problem
You cannot meditate your way out of a depleted adrenal system. HPA axis dysregulation, cortisol steal, thyroid suppression, gut barrier damage — the science behind why "just relax" is not clinical advice.
Normal Is Not the Same as Optimal
Reference ranges are statistical averages derived from unwell populations. A TSH of 3.8, ferritin of 14, and vitamin D of 52 are all "normal" — and all potentially inadequate. The distinction that changes everything.
The Air in the Room
Synthetic fragrance is everywhere, largely unregulated, and affecting more people than anyone is counting. Phthalates, synthetic musks, aldehydes — the chemicals in a typical perfume and why some people react when others don't.
How Fast You Age Is Measurable — And Modifiable
Grip strength predicts all-cause mortality better than blood pressure. Gait speed predicts hospitalisation. Blood markers of neurological stress are being studied as early signals. Biological age and chronological age diverge — and the gap is measurable.
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Nobody Gets Ill Out of Nowhere
Every heart attack, every cancer diagnosis, every autoimmune flare has a story that began years before the event. The HOMA-IR was elevated seven years before the diabetes diagnosis. The homocysteine was climbing five years before the cardiac event. The data was there. The window to intervene was open.
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Your Ferritin is Normal. But Is It Optimal?
The ferritin debate divides haematologists. One camp says we're over-medicalising. The other says we've been missing iron deficiency for decades using a methodologically flawed reference range. Both have a point. Neither is asking the right question.
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Consumer Testing vs Clinical Testing — Why the Gap Matters
Gut microbiome kits, testosterone panels, vitamin D home tests. The instinct is right. The execution often isn't. The difference between what a consumer test measures and what a clinical question actually requires answering.
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Blood Tests, Apps, and Functional Testing — What’s the Difference?
NHS blood panels, health apps and functional investigation: what each can and can’t tell you, and how to judge which level your situation needs.
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Treating the Test Result vs Reading the Pattern
A single marker tells you what. A pattern tells you why. The most consequential clinical skill in functional medicine is recognising what multiple findings reveal together that no individual test can show.
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What Your Bloods Actually Tell You (And What They Don’t)
A full blood panel can be reported as entirely normal while the patient is experiencing progressive anaemia, B12 deficiency, declining cognition, and drug-induced malabsorption simultaneously. The problem is not the test — it’s what we’re looking for in it.
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What Does “Your Blood Tests Are Normal” Actually Mean?
Normal tests don’t mean nothing is wrong. They mean nothing was found — with the tools that were used. The standard panel looks at 8–12 markers. We look at 65+.
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Five Things Your Blood Panel Tells You That Your Report Doesn’t
Your GP report says “within range.” The patterns hiding between the numbers tell a different story — insulin resistance, iron metabolism, thyroid conversion, and inflammation.
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Your Blood Test Was Wrong Before It Was Analysed
The wrong arm. A non-fasted sample for markers that require fasting. The biggest failures in blood testing happen before the blood reaches the lab.
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Your TSH Is 3.8. Your GP Said Normal.
TSH is one marker. One. It tells you what the pituitary is asking the thyroid to do — not what the thyroid is producing, not whether T4 is converting to T3, and not whether antibodies are destroying the gland.
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The Satiety Index — Why Some Foods Keep You Full and Others Leave You Hungry an Hour Later
Susanna Holt’s 1995 study measured how full 38 foods kept people per calorie. Boiled potatoes scored 323%. Croissants scored 47%. The four mechanisms that predict satiety, why ultra-processed food bypasses all of them, and why GLP-1 drugs are doing pharmacologically what high-satiety meals have always done for free.
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Why Your Body Can’t Stop at One
Salted butter on sourdough. Dark chocolate with sea salt. The reason you can’t stop isn’t weakness — it’s neurobiology. The endocannabinoid system, the bliss point, why Akkermansia determines how strongly your GLP-1 fires, and what you can actually do about it.
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Body Composition in the 1990s — What We Already Knew Before Anyone Was Listening
Meal timing, insulin partitioning, protein thermogenesis, testosterone:cortisol balance, and satiety science were all established by the mid-1990s and being taught to clients as free practical guides. Thirty years later they are being sold as revolutionary discoveries. The obesity epidemic is not a knowledge gap. The framework was right. The tools are just better now.
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Whey Protein, Insulin, GLP-1, and Why the Drug Everyone Is Injecting Works the Same Way as Breakfast
Whey raises insulin 90% more than bread does — while raising blood sugar 57% less. This finding has been misread to mean protein is dangerous. It actually explains GLP-1 mechanism, why pre-meal protein improves blood sugar control, and how the satiety science behind Ozempic has been available through food for thirty years.
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Prediabetes — The Years Before the Diagnosis
Standard testing catches prediabetes at the end of a metabolic process that is often years long. Fasting insulin and HOMA-IR can show it earlier, when change is easiest. The UK and US thresholds, the markers that see it coming, and what helps.
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What Is HOMA-IR — And Why Doesn’t Your GP Test for It?
Your fasting glucose is normal. Your fasting insulin isn’t tested. HOMA-IR catches insulin resistance years before glucose rises — and it’s not on the standard panel.
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Iron Deficiency Without Anaemia — The Pattern Your GP Misses
Your haemoglobin is fine, so you’re not anaemic. But your ferritin is 15, your hair is falling out, and you can’t get up the stairs. Iron deficiency without anaemia is one of the most under-diagnosed patterns in primary care.
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Why Your Ferritin Can Be “Normal” and Still Be the Problem
Ferritin at 15 can sit inside a lab’s range, yet below 30 µg/L means low iron stores. Why “not anaemic” isn’t the same as having enough iron.
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Gut Health & Nutrition
The Long Game — When a Protocol Needs More Time Than a Client Has Patience
Chronic conditions need protocols that outlast motivation. The compliance ceiling is real. The self-sabotage is usually unwitting. And the timeline for Candida and eczema is measured in months, not weeks. An honest clinical account from both sides of the consultation.
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The Healthiest Workout Ever
Not the hardest. Not the longest. The one that trains brain, nervous system, coordination, psychological resilience, and cardiovascular capacity simultaneously. Seven exercises, the philosophy behind them, and the client who does it all at 86.
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Why You’re Still Bloated — And Why the Advice You’ve Been Given Isn’t Working
What the 2025 European consensus says about bloating, the warning signs that mean see your GP first, and the contributors worth looking for when diet changes and probiotics haven’t worked, with the evidence for each graded.
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Why Going to the Toilet Is Harder Than It Should Be
Position. Breathing. Psychology. Timing. The mechanics of a bowel movement are more fixable than most people realise — and almost nobody talks about them honestly. If you can’t go without your phone, your nervous system is telling you something.
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Why Your Fatigue Might Be Cellular — What the Organic Acids Test Reveals
Fatigue that doesn’t respond to sleep or rest often has a cellular origin. The OAT maps mitochondrial function, neurotransmitter production, B-vitamin status, and gut overgrowth from a single urine sample — and explains why fatigue that “nothing explains” often has a very specific biochemical cause.
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Brain Fog Is Not a Diagnosis — What the Organic Acids Test Reveals
Brain fog is one of the most common complaints in functional practice and one of the least investigated. Where the Organic Acids Test fits in looking for the causes.
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When to Run the OAT and GI-MAP Together — The Clinical Case for Combined Testing
The GI-MAP tells you what’s living in your gut. The OAT tells you what those organisms are producing and what that’s doing to your body. Run them together and they explain each other in ways that change the entire clinical picture.
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Glyphosate — What the OAT Add-On Reveals and Who Should Consider Testing
Glyphosate is detectable in the urine of the majority of people tested. It doesn’t cause obvious symptoms. What it does instead is selectively suppress the gut bacteria that keep dysbiosis in check — while leaving the problematic ones largely unaffected.
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Oxalates — Why Your Healthy Diet Might Be Making Things Worse
Spinach. Almonds. Dark chocolate. All on the functional nutrition approved list. All very high in oxalates. When the gut bacteria that degrade them are depleted, these compounds accumulate in tissue and produce pain, fatigue, and joint problems nobody traces back to breakfast.
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Exercise, Appetite and the Weight Loss Paradox
Why does exercise make you hungrier during weight loss — and what does that mean for your programme design? The exercise-appetite compensation effect, ghrelin rebound, why HIIT outperforms steady-state cardio for satiety, and the honest truth about swimming and weight loss.
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The Morning Constitutional
My dog Dexter goes to the toilet at the same time every morning without fail. Most of my clients can’t say that. There’s a clinical reason for both — and it’s more fixable than you think.
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Food as Functional Medicine — Three Recipes, Three Body Systems
Liver support, gut repair, and blood sugar stabilisation — each recipe built around the clinical mechanisms that make it work. Not health food. Not punishment. Food that does something specific.
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What a GI-MAP Stool Test Actually Measures
Quantitative PCR technology measuring bacteria, parasites, fungi, viruses, and inflammatory markers. What standard stool culture can’t tell you — and why it matters for skin, joints, brain fog, and immunity.
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Digestive Enzymes — What They Do, When You Need Them, and How to Choose
Protease, lipase, amylase, lactase, and alpha-galactosidase each address a completely different digestive failure. The GI-MAP elastase marker is the objective test for pancreatic output. The symptom-to-enzyme table maps which enzyme is indicated for which specific pattern. And the cephalic phase — slow eating, chewing — is the most underutilised digestive “supplement” available.
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Mucosal Barrier Repair — L-Glutamine, Zinc Carnosine, and the Sequence That Works
The GI-MAP secretory IgA and calprotectin markers establish the specific barrier picture. L-glutamine, zinc carnosine, collagen, butyrate, and DGL are the repair nutrients. But the 5R sequence — remove, replace, reinoculate, repair, rebalance — determines whether the repair holds. Applying repair nutrients without completing steps 1–3 first is painting over damp.
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Low Stomach Acid: What’s Real, What Isn’t, and How to Check
Low stomach acid is real, but it comes from atrophic gastritis, H. pylori, surgery or acid-suppressing drugs, not age, and heartburn isn’t a sign of it. What the evidence says about betaine HCl, apple cider vinegar and PPIs, and the blood test that actually checks.
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GI-MAP Markers That Standard Culture Misses
Secretory IgA, anti-gliadin antibodies, calprotectin, pancreatic elastase. The markers that turn a stool test from a pathogen hunt into a functional assessment.
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The Case for Real Food — Dairy, Organ Meats, and What Your Great-Grandmother Knew
The clinical case for dairy as bioavailable calcium, the forgotten power of organ meats and cod liver oil, and why soaking your oats isn’t just a TikTok trend.
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Fibre — The Unsexy Foundation of Gut Health
Soluble, insoluble, resistant starch, prebiotic fibres. What they do, how much you need, and why the standard Western diet is catastrophically low.
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Collagen — What the Evidence Actually Says
Type I, II, III. Hydrolysed peptides, bone broth, glycine. What works, what’s marketing, and how it fits into a gut repair protocol.
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Case Study: The Skin Problem That Was a Gut Problem
Eczema that no dermatologist could resolve. Dysbiotic flora, elevated zonulin, compromised secretory IgA. When the gut healed, the skin cleared.
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Protein Powder: Win, Loss or Better Than Nothing?
Whether it’s a win depends on what it replaces. Muscle, detox, immunity and gut claims graded; whey vs pea vs beef; lead and protein spiking; and the three I recommend, with their test results.
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The pH Your Doctor Never Measures — And Why the Alkaline Diet Got It Half Right
Blood pH is held within tight limits, and ionised water won’t change it. Where dietary acid load does matter, explained.
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Stress, Hormones & Recovery
Stress Is Personal — Why Your Stress Isn’t My Stress
The most stressed person in the room is often the one who isn’t in crisis. Stress is not a fixed quantity — it’s the relationship between load and capacity, and every variable in that equation is individual.
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Loneliness Is a Clinical Variable — The Biology of Social Isolation Nobody Talks About
Loneliness is linked with lower gut microbiome diversity, higher cortisol, inflammation-related gene expression, heart disease, stroke, dementia and early death. What the studies show and how sure they are.
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The Body Keeps the Score — How Trauma Becomes Terrain
Physical and emotional trauma alter the biological terrain in measurable ways — the calcium shell, the cell danger response, vagal tone and cervical trauma, and the mineral signature of sustained stress. And why disconnection from the body is one of the most consequential clinical findings in practice.
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The HPA Axis — Why Stress Hormones Run the Show
Cortisol does not merely respond to stress — it reorganises the entire hormonal hierarchy around survival. The four cortisol patterns visible on the DUTCH Plus, what stress does to sex hormones, and why you cannot fix sex hormones, thyroid, or immune function without understanding what cortisol is doing first.
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The HPT and HPG Axes — The Stories Nobody Tells About Thyroid and Sex Hormones
Why TSH alone misses most thyroid dysfunction. The three oestrogen metabolism pathways that determine cancer risk. Why testosterone is downstream of stress, sleep, and insulin. And the hormone replacement question — addressed directly, including the Depo-Provera meningioma precedent.
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From Photons to People — The Biology of Health That Medicine Forgot to Teach You
Your cells are making light right now. Your dog just communicated something to you without language. Slime mould solves mazes without a brain. And somewhere in your body, a signal is being sent that you are not listening to. The biology of health from its first principles — from biophotons through body awareness to the cacophony of signals that determines whether you eat well or not.
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Can You Catch a Cold? — What the Evidence Actually Says About Infection, Immunity and the People Who Never Get Ill
Why does one person in a family get sick while another doesn’t? What do sleep, stress and social ties have to do with it? Cohen’s cold studies, graded, with the right figures, and why two people in the same physical environment are not living in the same biological one.
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Why I Got Properly Ill — And What I Think Actually Caused It
October 2021, the most ill I’ve been in my adult life. What loaded the system in the months before, the explanation I can’t rule out, and what I’d do differently with sleep, movement, food, stress and testing.
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Massage Therapy — The Clinical Case
Not just relaxation. Parasympathetic activation, measurable cortisol reduction, vagal tone improvement, and lymphatic support — with the evidence behind each. Where massage fits in a TDG-led protocol, what it cannot do, and recommended practitioners in Glasgow and Edinburgh.
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The Toxic Load No One Talks About: What Your Skincare Is Doing to Your Hormones
The average woman applies 168 chemicals to her skin before leaving the house. Here’s the enzyme competition mechanism, the biomonitoring data, and why it matters clinically when you’re working on oestrogen clearance.
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Why Your Recovery Protocol Should Include Getting Up a Mountain
Nature immersion, vagal tone, grounding, art, and the measurable parasympathetic benefits of getting away from your phone, your routine, and your postcode. Plus four recommended experiences.
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Perimenopause — What the DUTCH Test Reveals That Standard Testing Misses
Two women with identical serum oestrogen levels can have completely different metabolite profiles and clinical needs. The DUTCH Plus shows oestrogen pathways, progesterone metabolites, and how the cortisol awakening response is interacting with every other hormone during the perimenopausal transition.
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Eat Up — You’re at Your Granny’s: The Social Architecture of Food Choices
You know what to eat. The reason you don’t always do it is not willpower. It is the childhood conditioning, family food rules, neurochemical reality of cravings, social eating architecture, and metabolic disruption that shapes every food decision — most of which was built before you were old enough to question it.
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Why Knowing Isn’t Doing — The Psychology of Health Change
You already know what you should be doing. The information was never the problem. The intention-behaviour gap is real and measurable. The stages of change model explains why most advice lands at the wrong stage. The biology of HPA dysregulation, blood glucose, and sleep deprivation explains why the neurobiology works against you. And data changes the motivational context in ways that advice alone cannot.
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Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers on Sunday Evenings
The Sunday-to-Monday cortisol shift is real and measurable. What your dread is telling you about your HPA axis, your autonomic nervous system, and your relationship with your work.
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The Pregnenolone Steal, Re-examined — What Stress Really Does to Your Hormones
Under chronic stress, pregnenolone is shunted toward cortisol production at the expense of sex hormones. This is measurable on a DUTCH test — and it explains a lot.
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Why Can’t I Lose Weight Despite Eating Well and Exercising?
Because weight loss isn’t a calorie equation. It’s a hormonal equation — insulin, cortisol, thyroid, sex hormones, and gut function all determine whether your body releases or holds fat.
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Breathwork — Why Practice Makes Perfect Under Pressure
The sparring analogy applied to breathing: stress-test your stress management tools before you need them. CO₂ tolerance, the BOLT test, and why qi gong beats seated breathing for stress resilience under real conditions.
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Tai Chi, Qi Gong, and Movement as Medicine — Why Slow Is Not the Same as Easy
Precision movement systems with a clinical evidence base most exercise prescriptions cannot match. The Cochrane review finding, the NEJM fibromyalgia RCT, Paul Chek zone exercises, and Zhan Zhuang as a starting point that costs nothing.
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Blood Pressure — The Lifestyle Signal You’re Being Medicated For
Sodium:potassium ratio, magnesium as natural calcium channel blocker, adrenal and RAAS activation, insulin resistance, CO₂ and breathing mechanics — the upstream investigation that should precede the prescription.
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Bioidentical Hormones — What the DUTCH Test Tells You Before You Start
The WHI used medroxyprogesterone acetate — not progesterone. The distinction changes the safety profile, the metabolic fate, and the entire clinical approach. The DUTCH Plus maps oestrogen metabolism pathways, progesterone metabolites, and methylation capacity before any hormonal intervention begins.
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The Biochemistry of Structure — Muscle, Joints, Tendons, and Why They Fail
Musculoskeletal pain is rarely a mechanical problem in isolation. Creatine across seven systems, the collagen synthesis pathway from glycine to cross-linking (cofactor at each step), the Janda muscle classification, tissue tolerance as the key concept, and the central sensitisation cascade that explains why chronic pain outlasts the injury.
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Depression Is Not Always a Brain Chemistry Problem — The Inflammatory Subtype
Some people with depression have raised inflammation. The proposed route from the gut through inflammation to tryptophan, and the test that looks at it.
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Why You Can’t Go Unless It’s Your Own Toilet
Why many people can’t go unless conditions are right: the nervous system, cortisol and gut motility.
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Everyone Is Told to Sleep More. Nobody Is Told Why They Can’t.
Sleep hygiene advice assumes the problem is behaviour. Where biochemistry, including magnesium, comes into it.
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What’s In Your Food — The Series
Clinical Philosophy — The TDG Approach
The Gap Series — What Your Test Didn’t Show
What standard medical investigation is designed to find — and what exists in the functional territory between “nothing found” and “actually well.” Not anti-medicine. The missing layer.
Your Test Was Normal. So Why Don’t You Feel Normal?
Standard medical investigation rules out serious pathology. Functional investigation defines the distance from optimal. Between “nothing found” and “actually well” lies a functional territory where most chronic health problems originate. This series maps it.
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What Your Colonoscopy Didn’t Show
A colonoscopy looks at gross anatomy. The GI-MAP looks at microbial ecology, intestinal permeability, immune activation, and digestive function. They answer different questions. If your gut symptoms persist after a clear colonoscopy, here is why — and what the next investigation looks like.
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What Your NHS Blood Test Didn’t Show
Lab reference ranges are derived from populations that include unwell people. A result within “normal” range is not the same as optimal. Insulin resistance, subclinical hypothyroidism, early inflammation, and nutrient insufficiency all hide in the gap between normal and well.
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What Symptom-Based HRT Prescribing Misses
Prescribing hormones without knowing the oestrogen metabolite pathways, methylation adequacy, cortisol pattern, and whether transdermal progesterone is reaching tissue level is prescribing blind. DUTCH shows the canvas. Then we can talk about what to add and how much.
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What Your Cholesterol Test Didn’t Tell You
Elevated LDL is a finding, not a diagnosis. LDL particle size, Lp(a), insulin resistance as the primary driver, CoQ10 depletion from statins, thyroid as a reversible cause — none of these appear in a standard cholesterol test. The cause of the finding matters as much as the finding itself.
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What Your Blood Pressure Reading Doesn’t Explain
Blood pressure is the output of multiple inputs: insulin resistance, magnesium deficiency, cortisol load, impaired nitric oxide production, sleep apnoea, sodium:potassium imbalance. Treating the number without identifying the input is effective medicine by one measure and incomplete by another.
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What a Normal TSH Doesn’t Mean
TSH is a pituitary marker, not a thyroid tissue marker. Normal TSH with low free T3, elevated reverse T3, and elevated TPO antibodies describes significant thyroid dysfunction invisible to TSH-only testing. The conversion problem matters as much as the production problem.
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Lifestyle & Medications
From Religion to Spirituality to Meaning — and Why It All Shows Up in the Blood
Harold Koenig has spent decades at Duke trying to isolate faith as an independent health variable. What remains after you control for social connection, behaviour, and socioeconomic factors — and what faith-based CBT reveals about working within rather than against a patient’s existing belief framework.
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The Autonomic Balance — Why Calm Isn’t Always the Answer
The sympathetic nervous system is not the enemy. Parasympathetic lock-in is its own clinical problem. The target is flexibility — the capacity to activate fully and recover efficiently. What HRV measures, what the DUTCH reveals, and why some people need more activation, not less. Final part of the Inner Architecture series.
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What Are You For?
Purpose is not a luxury variable. The ikigai research, the mortality data, the cortisol curves of purposeful versus purposeless living — all pointing in the same direction. The clinical case for asking the question that most intake forms never ask. Part Three of the Inner Architecture series.
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Forgiveness But Don’t Forget
Forgiveness is one of the most evidence-backed interventions in psychoneuroimmunology — and one of the most misrepresented. The clinical cost of a justified grievance, what forgiveness actually requires, and why the memory should stay even when the resentment goes. Part Two of the Inner Architecture series.
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What You Believe About Yourself Is a Clinical Variable
The placebo and nocebo effects are not fringe phenomena — they are central to how biology works. The beliefs you hold about your body, your future, and your place in something larger than yourself have measurable physiological consequences. Part One of the Inner Architecture series.
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This Moment Is the Only One That’s Actually Happening
On being present — the neuroscience of the default mode network, what chronic mental time travel costs you physiologically, and a Scottish July morning with an espresso and a dog who understood it better than I did.
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Your Core Is Talking to Your Brain — and Most People Have Stopped Listening
The running drill that goes wrong, CSF clearance, cross-crawl integration, and why coordination-based exercise does something for cognition that aerobic training alone does not. The neuroscience is clearer than most practitioners realise.
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It’s the Germ. It’s the Host. It’s Both.
From Koch to Béchamp, from Covid to contagion — the full spectrum of opinion on infection, immunity and what actually makes us sick. The honest clinical position after nearly forty years in practice.
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Cancer Doesn’t Happen in a Vacuum
Cancer happens in a body that has been depleted, inflamed, and under-resourced for long enough that its surveillance systems stop catching what they should. Six terrain factors — and what you can actually test and address.
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Follow the Money: Seven Health Narratives That Got Distorted
Fat, salt, cholesterol, sunlight, red meat, breakfast, fluoride. Seven stories the food and pharmaceutical industries helped shape — what the evidence actually says, and where the honest clinical position lands.
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GLP-1 — What Your Prescriber Didn’t Tell You
Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro produce 15–20% body weight loss on average. They are also associated with 25–40% of that loss being lean mass, gastroparesis that can persist after stopping, nutritional deficiencies, and substantial weight regain in those who discontinue. The functional medicine view — what to test before, what to monitor during, and what to address if you want results that last.
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Calories Matter — But Not in the Way You’ve Been Told
Calories are at the top of the pecking order for weight management. But calorie needs vary by up to 1,500 kcal per day before individual variation. Damaged metabolism, liver congestion, insulin resistance, and nutrient depletion all change how calories are processed. The clinical nuance that most calorie conversations never reach.
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Dandelion — The Field Medicine Everyone Walks Past
Taraxacum officinale. The weed in your lawn. The plant that German farmers grow in fields for its medicinal value. Liver bitter, bile stimulant, prebiotic, anti-inflammatory, diuretic. The full clinical picture — and the honest laxative warning about the stem sap.
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It’s Not Alright for Me Either
The assumption that a functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner is somehow exempt from the pressures of real life. Late nights, family worry, grief, a dog in the bed, and eating cold food between clients — and why testing tells me how to stay functional through all of it, not how to avoid all of it.
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The Training Diary — What Data Actually Does
Three diaries from 1994, 1995 and 1996. Daily intensity codes in biro. A fight lost by majority decision and the honest post-match appraisal written that same evening. What self-monitoring looked like before wearables — and what it still does better.
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The Daily Practice That Costs Nothing — Gratitude, Attention, and Why Noticing Changes Everything
Gratitude is not a wellness cliché. It is a neurochemical intervention with a measurable effect on cortisol, HRV, and the autonomic nervous system. The practice takes twenty minutes and involves a dog, some woods, and the decision to notice what is already there.
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Medicinal Mushrooms — What the Evidence Shows
Five species, graded: what each is used for, the trials behind it, the safety points, and how to read a mushroom supplement label. Doses live in each Fungi of the Month edition.
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The Male Andropause — What Low T Actually Means
Low total testosterone is not the same as low free testosterone. Primary hypogonadism is not the same as secondary HPA suppression. And TRT is not the same conversation for a 45-year-old and a 65-year-old. The complete clinical picture — SHBG, oestradiol in men, fertility, and what to address before any replacement is considered.
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HRT — The Complete Clinical Picture
How menopause is actually diagnosed, delivery routes and clot risk, the breast cancer figures, both halves of the timing evidence, and what blood, saliva and DUTCH tests can and can’t tell you.
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Electrolytes — Not Just Salt and Water
The sodium-potassium pump runs your nervous system, gut, metabolism, and adrenal function. “I’m taking electrolytes” tells us almost nothing clinically useful. Which ones, in what ratio, at what time, and for what physiological reason — those are the questions that matter.
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CoQ10 and Statins — What the Trials Show
Should you take CoQ10 with a statin? Three meta-analyses disagree, and most muscle symptoms on statins aren’t caused by the statin. What the trials used, graded.
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Bread, Gluten, and the Gut-Brain Axis — What a Peer-Reviewed Paper Said That Nobody Wanted to Hear
In 2016 a peer-reviewed paper argued that bread affects mental health through two independent mechanisms: gut permeability and opioid-like exorphins. A decade on, the evidence is stronger and the psychiatric system still isn’t listening.
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The Mental Health Connection Nobody Is Talking About — MTHFR, Methylation, and Why Your Mood Might Be a Nutrient Problem
MTHFR variants impair the methylation cycle that produces every major neurotransmitter. Depression, anxiety, OCD, ADHD, bipolar disorder — all have documented associations with impaired folate metabolism. And we are adding synthetic folic acid to every loaf of bread.
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Folic Acid in Every Loaf — What the UK Flour Fortification Policy Gets Wrong
From the end of 2026, synthetic folic acid will be added to all non-wholemeal wheat flour in the UK without your consent. For people with MTHFR variants, this is not a public health win. It is a clinical risk — and it is testable.
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“It’s Just a Vitamin.” Why the Form You Take Matters.
Folic acid is not the same as methylfolate. Cyanocobalamin is not the same as methylcobalamin. Beta-carotene is not the same as retinol — and I carry BCMO1 variants that mean plant-source vitamin A does almost nothing for my status. The conversion step is everything.
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Nitric Oxide — The Molecule Your Cardiovascular System Cannot Work Without
A Nobel Prize was awarded for its discovery. After 40, production falls by roughly 50%. Homocysteine scavenges it, BH4 depletion uncouples the enzyme that makes it, and antibacterial mouthwash destroys the oral bacteria that convert dietary nitrate to it. And most people have never heard of it.
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“Everyone Takes Vitamin D for Immunity.” Here’s Why That’s Not Enough.
The advice is not wrong. But the model behind it — one supplement, one problem, fixed — misses the magnesium conversion dependency, the K2 calcium direction problem, the VDR genetic variation, the nitric oxide connection, and the UV skin-NO pulse that D3 supplements cannot replicate.
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The Full Vitamin D Story — Geography, Evolution, and Why Scotland Changes Everything
Why vitamin D needs differ at Scottish latitudes: UVB and the October-to-March window, VDR genetics, and the clinical position on supplementation.
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Skin Tone, Latitude, and Why Vitamin D Advice Fails in Scotland
Edinburgh sits further north than Moscow. What that means for vitamin D synthesis, and why the same advice can’t work for every skin tone.
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The Vitamin D Mineral Axis — Calcium, Magnesium, Phosphate, PTH and Kidney Conversion
Vitamin D works within a system that includes PTH, calcium, phosphate, magnesium and kidney conversion. A clinical map of how they interact.
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Sick Care, Well Care, and the Gap In Between
Medicine was built to recognise and treat the absence of health — not to cultivate its presence. The sliding scale between acutely ill and fully optimised is where most people actually live. And it is the place the system is least equipped to serve.
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Nobody Has a Digital Twin
In engineering it means a live model of one particular machine, capable of prediction. Nobody has that for a human being. What the four layers actually are, what exists today, and why the most valuable thing in this whole area is not a technology.
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Your Heart Talks More Than It Listens
Along the vagus nerve the traffic is overwhelmingly upward — your heart is reporting, not receiving orders. What heart rate variability actually measures, why six breaths a minute works, and where the popular version stops being physiology.
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Insulin Is a Peptide
The person claiming peptides are misspelled pesticides and the person selling you BPC-157 are making the same error — both think peptide is a product. What the studies actually show, tier by tier, and the question worth asking instead.
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The Most Flexible Person in the Room Is Often the Most Unwell
Fibromyalgia, IBS, anxiety, chronic fatigue — four labels, four clinics, and the one finding that might connect them never gets mentioned, because nobody thinks of childhood flexibility as a symptom.
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You Can Eat a Perfect Diet and Still Be Deficient
Food first is the right default — and it is also a claim about absorption. Between what a food contains and what reaches your bloodstream sit three exchange rates: the form the nutrient is in, how it was prepared, and the state of the gut receiving it.
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Half Right Is Worse Than Wrong
Complete nonsense gets rejected at the door. The dangerous version opens with real biology and keeps going in the same confident register into territory where nothing can be checked. One question sorts it — and it costs nothing to ask.
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The Muscles Are Stupid
A muscle can do exactly one thing: shorten. Everything you would call skill happens upstream in the nervous system — which means when someone moves badly, you are looking at an instruction problem, and you were the one giving the instructions.
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Nobody Wants a Transverse Abdominis
Nobody has ever asked me to improve their intra-abdominal pressure — they ask for a flat stomach. Why more effort into the wrong muscle deepens the problem, and why the route starts several steps before anything resembling stomach exercise.
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The Number That Looks Fine But Isn’t
Two people get their gut test back with the same reassuring ratio. One has a healthy microbiome; the other has almost nothing living in there. What the Firmicutes to Bacteroidetes ratio quietly discards — and why every ratio deserves the same scrutiny.
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Why I Can’t Give You a Straight Answer
Six people describe the same exhaustion and have six different causes. Why the same symptom needs different corrections in different people — and why the confident thirty-second answer is the suspicious one.
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My Father Dug Holes Wrong for Forty Years
A sports psychology professor told me stability training increases fear of movement and harms performance. On the specifics he was largely right — and correcting a forty-year-old occupational pattern would have been the injury mechanism, not the fix.
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The Cast You Never Took Off
Ketosis was built as a clinical intervention with an indication, a supervising team and measurement throughout. Worn indefinitely without any of those, the thing that healed you becomes the thing wearing you down.
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The Diet You Think You’re On
Low carb high protein, low carb high fat, and low carb low everything are three different diets with one name. Protein decides whether ketosis happens at all — and it is the last thing you should be cutting.
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She Phoned About Her Hair
She was eighty-four. The call was about hair thinning, low energy and not being able to put weight on. Eighteen months later she was hitting focus pads with everything she had. Then she fell at home and broke her hip anyway — and why that is not the failure it looks like.
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There’s No Such Thing as a Bad Exercise. There’s Such a Thing as the Wrong Person.
A boxing jab and a loaded shoulder press travel through nearly the same range. One is essential; the other would get a client stopped. Contraindication is not a property of a movement — it is a relationship between the movement and the person doing it.
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Nobody Has a Zinc Deficiency
Pull one bird down on a hanging mobile and every other bird moves. Minerals work the same way. Why single-nutrient thinking fails, why supplementing one at dose is an intervention rather than a supplement, and why ratios tell you more than levels.
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The Mineral With No Job Description
Boron has no recommended intake and no named deficiency disease. It still changes how calcium, magnesium and vitamin D behave. What that gap reveals about how nutrients get classified — and what the method was structurally blind to.
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Nobody Remembers What They Ate
Much of what you are told about food rests on people reconstructing six months of eating from memory, over the phone, to a stranger evaluating them. How to tell strong nutrition evidence from weak — and why the answer usually depends on who you are.
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The 30-Second Lie — And Why Your Client Collapses Exactly on Cue
Your client has never once finished a set early. But somehow, at exactly 30 seconds, they collapse. To the nanosecond. This is not fatigue — it is self-preservation calibrated to the agreed duration of the set. Why exercise science designed for athletes does not map onto the deconditioned client, and what to do instead.
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The Body as Nested Bags — A Model for Thinking About Back Pain
Organs, fascia, the diaphragm and the psoas as connected structures: a model that guides my assessment, graded as untested, with the NHS red flags for when back pain needs a doctor.
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The Movement Efficiency Paradox — Why Getting Better at Exercise Can Make It Worse for You
Inefficiency is a win — until it isn’t. Efficiency is a win — until it isn’t. The four-stage skill acquisition journey most coaches never explain, the phasic vs postural muscle distinction, and why the same walk every day for ten years is not ten years of benefit.
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As Many Reps as Possible, or as Many Good Reps?
Short squats, half press-ups and a treadmill rail you lean on: what full-range and handrail trials show the shortcut costs, and what a good rep asks of you.
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Walking as Medicine — The Most Underrated Health Intervention That Costs Nothing
Fox walking, nasal breathing, the core exercise most people have backwards, the overhead swing as a nervous system reset, and why the pace at which you can breathe through your nose is the therapeutic pace. A complete movement practice built from nearly forty years of coaching.
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From the Caltrac to the Apple Watch — What 30 Years of Movement Data Actually Teaches You
In the 1990s I clipped a research-grade accelerometer to my belt. The four Apple Health mobility metrics most people scroll past — walking asymmetry, double support time, walking speed, step length — and what they reveal about biological age and functional capacity.
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How to Eat Out Without Derailing Your Protocol
Eating out is not the enemy of a functional medicine programme. Done well — the right restaurant, slow meal, good company — it is itself a clinical intervention. The practical ordering guide, the Italian template, and where I actually send clients in Edinburgh.
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The Non-Negotiables: 7 Lifestyle Levers That Actually Move the Needle
Seven evidence-based practices with solid human data behind them — and an honest conversation about why they still might not be enough. Post-meal walks, morning light, resistance training, vitamin D with VDR caveats, binders. Done before supplements.
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Supplement of the Month: Magnesium
Eight clinical forms, three contraindications, and one question you need to answer before you start. The honest pros, genuine cons, form-by-form breakdown, and the three human studies that back it up.
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What Actually Happens When You Drink — Alcohol, Your Liver, Your Gut and the Truth About Moderation
Not a lecture. Not permission. Liver, gut, blood sugar, sulfites and genetics, why the “moderate drinking is good for you” story fell apart, and an evidence-graded guide to what actually helps.
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30 Years on a Drug Studied for 8 Weeks
PPIs, statins, metformin, the pill. Every one depletes specific nutrients. The pharmacology textbooks document it. Your prescriber didn’t mention it.
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What Your Medications Are Quietly Depleting
Twelve common medication categories and their documented nutrient interactions. CoQ10, B12, magnesium, zinc, folate — the depletions are predictable, dose-dependent, and rarely discussed.
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Smart Choices — Small Changes That Actually Matter
The practical, non-dramatic changes that move the needle most — sleep timing, meal composition, hydration, movement snacks, and the unsexy habits that high performers actually do.
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We’ve Been Measuring Exercise All Wrong
Steps, calories burned, miles run — none of them measure movement quality. What nearly forty years of coaching has taught me about the difference between exercise and functional movement.
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ADHD Diagnosis Wait UK — What to Do While You’re Waiting
The NHS waiting list is years long. Functional testing can identify contributing factors — blood sugar instability, nutrient deficiencies, gut-brain axis dysfunction — while you wait.
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Strength Is a Vital Sign — The Simple Tests That Predict How Long You’ll Live
Grip strength outperformed blood pressure as a mortality predictor in 139,691 people across 17 countries. Six functional tests — sit-to-stand, single-leg balance, gait speed, chair stand, VO₂ max proxy — none measured in a standard GP appointment, all with strong survival data behind them.
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Your Metabolic Nature — Why the Same Diet Works for One Person and Terribly for Another
Metabolic typing is the clinical science behind individual nutritional variation. The six Metabolic Nature types — Kinetic, Grounded, Catalyst, Endurance, Adaptive, Calibrated — explain why generic dietary advice produces such inconsistent results, and why your biology, not your willpower, determines what actually works.
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Why One Diet Can’t Work for Everyone — Introducing Metabolic Natures
Roger Williams showed in 1956 how widely people considered clinically normal differ in their biochemistry. Metabolic Natures: two axes, a place to start, and a prediction that can come back not met.
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Food Sensitivity Testing — What the IgG Panel Can and Can’t Tell You
IgG to a food mostly reflects that you eat it, so the panel is a shortlist, not a diagnosis. Here is the one randomised trial, how much weight it carries, and the 12-week elimination-and-reintroduction trial the result is used for.
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HRV — What Heart Rate Variability Actually Measures and Why It Matters Clinically
HRV is not a wellness score. It is a continuous readout of autonomic nervous system balance — the balance between sympathetic activation and parasympathetic recovery. When it is chronically low, the system is running without reserve. Understanding what drives it connects directly to the DUTCH cortisol pattern and functional testing.
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The Hardest Thing to Change Isn’t Your Diet. It’s Your Programming.
Changing what you eat is the easy part. Changing the beliefs, conditioned responses, and neural grooves built over decades is the harder work — and the more important one. The neuroscience of health habits, the post-meal sweet craving explained properly, practitioner bias, and why the most resistant client in the room often has the best outcome.
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The Appliance of Science: Eight Ideas, Graded
A weight vest, a heel raise at your desk, a two-minute wall sit. Eight everyday health ideas, graded honestly.
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Detoxification Series
Mould, Mycotoxins and Your Health — What’s Known and What Isn’t
Damp and mould at home are linked to asthma, wheeze and chest infections; that evidence is solid. A wider mycotoxin “mould illness” is claimed far more often than shown. What urine tests can and can’t tell you, why the HLA-DR claim doesn’t hold, and what to do first. Rewritten October 2026.
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Glutathione — The Master Antioxidant, What Depletes It, and How to Actually Restore It
Glutathione is the body’s primary antioxidant and the molecule Phase Two liver detoxification depends on most. The OAT pyroglutamic acid marker is the most sensitive functional indicator of its depletion. Understanding NAC, GlyNAC, liposomal delivery, and why identifying the cause of depletion matters as much as the supplementation approach.
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Heavy Metals and Toxic Burden — When to Test, What Testing Reveals, and the Case for Hair Analysis
Standard blood metal testing misses chronic toxic burden because metals accumulate in tissue, not serum. The OAT as the first functional signal, hair tissue mineral analysis and its underappreciated mineral displacement patterns, when provoked urine testing is warranted, and why HTMA is sometimes the most clinically appropriate starting point.
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Liver, Bile, and the Detox Pathway Nobody Explains Properly
Phase I and Phase II liver detox, why the sequence matters, bile insufficiency and gallbladder function, beta-glucuronidase and oestrogen recirculation, TUDCA, and the bitter foods reflex that modern diets have eliminated entirely.
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Fatty Liver, Insulin Resistance, and the Metabolic Loop
NAFLD affects one in three adults and most don’t know it. It’s a metabolic disease, not primarily a liver disease. The bidirectional feedback loop, fructose’s specific hepatotoxicity, the gut-liver axis, and the blood markers that reveal it years before enzymes flag.
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The Kidneys — The Organ Nobody Talks About Until It’s Too Late
Calcium, magnesium, vitamin D, and PTH in a four-way regulatory loop the kidneys sit at the centre of. Acid-base balance, uric acid, oxalates in renal tissue, and the blood markers that show decline years before creatinine moves.
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Lymphatic Drainage — Detox’s Forgotten System
Moves more fluid than the cardiovascular system but has no pump. Movement is the pump. Skipping, rebounding, Power Plate, diaphragmatic breathing, contrast hydrotherapy — and why the glymphatic brain clearance system requires sleep to function.
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Probiotics — What the Research Actually Shows, Strain Specificity, and When They Help
Not all probiotics are the same. Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG, Saccharomyces boulardii, Bifidobacterium longum, Akkermansia muciniphila, and spore-based Bacillus species each have distinct evidence bases and clinical niches. The GI-MAP tells you which strains are depleted. And SIBO is the condition where standard probiotics consistently make things worse.
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Prebiotics — Feeding the Right Bacteria the Right Way
Different fibres feed different bacteria. Resistant starch feeds F. prausnitzii. Pectin feeds Akkermansia. Inulin feeds Bifidobacterium. The 30-plant principle works because diversity of substrate selects for diversity of species. And why prebiotic foods cause symptoms in SIBO — and what to do about it.
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Postbiotics and Fermented Foods — Beyond Probiotics
Urolithins, equol, IPA, secondary bile acids, and GABA from bacterial metabolism are the mechanisms behind much of what was previously attributed to the bacteria themselves. The Sonnenburg fermented food study. Six fermented foods and what makes each one clinically distinct. Why SIBO and histamine intolerance make fermented foods temporarily contraindicated.
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SCFAs and Butyrate — From Gut Bacteria to Immune Health
Butyrate fuels the colonocytes that maintain the gut’s anaerobic environment. When it falls, the environment fails and dysbiosis follows. The GI-MAP producer species, prebiotic substrates, when to supplement, and the brain connection.
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Chronic Conditions — Functional Assessment
ME/CFS Is Not Medically Unexplained. It Is Medically Unmeasured.
The mitochondrial dysfunction, HPA axis changes, gut dysbiosis, immune activation, and oxidative stress patterns in ME/CFS are not invisible. They are measurable with the right tests. What has been missing is not evidence that these patterns exist — it is the clinical framework to look for them systematically.
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Dementia Is the UK’s Biggest Killer. Most Cases Are Preventable.
One in three people born in the UK will develop dementia. But Alzheimer’s is increasingly described as Type 3 Diabetes — insulin resistance in the brain. Homocysteine, omega-3 index, GFAP, sleep and the glymphatic system. The functional markers that show risk a decade before symptoms appear.
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Real Food — The Clinical Case
The TDG Story
My FDN Certification Review: Why I Changed How I Investigate Health
I had more than two decades of clinical practice before I did the FDN training. I was not easy to impress. Here’s what it taught me that nothing else had — and why I still use the framework as the spine of everything I do.
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What My Italian Grandparents Knew That Modern Medicine Is Only Just Catching Up To
My grandparents ran a restaurant in Ayr — glazed rooftop dining room overlooking the Isle of Arran, long before alfresco dining in Scotland was a thing. The post office next door was where my parents met. And the way my grandparents lived was, I now understand, one of the most evidence-backed approaches to long-term health that exists.
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Why I Wrote This Book
The honest story behind Test, Don’t Guess — nearly forty years in health and fitness, the FDN training that changed everything, and why writing 300,000 words felt like the only way to say what needed saying.
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What Is FDN? The Training Behind the Test Don’t Guess Approach
Functional Diagnostic Nutrition — Reed Davis’s systematic approach to identifying healing opportunities through lab testing. What it is, how I use it, and why it changed my practice.
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Where I Learned What I Know — 37 Years Before the Algorithm
Before PubMed, before podcasts, before the algorithm — there were newsletters, phone orders, and photocopied papers. Peak Performance, MM2K, the 2001 Edinburgh movement dysfunction conference, Crayhon Research Nutrient Expo 2005. The origin story of the clinical thinking behind Detective Health.
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One Size Has Never Fitted All — What Cancer Research Is Finally Catching Up To
Treating all breast cancers identically because they’re all breast cancer is a category error. So is giving everyone the same dietary advice because they’re all human beings. The principle of biochemical individuality — what it means clinically, why it matters, and why testing before guessing is the only approach that respects individual biology.
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