The talk in geroscience circles over the last fortnight has been all about selenium: can selenium supplements give us the longer healthier life we want? The excitement was sparked by an experiment that found mice given selenium supplements had an improved health span (a longer disease-free period at the end of their lives). How does…
COULD WINTER SEA SWIMMING LIFT YOUR MOOD?
Last week Teenage Daughter asked me to go for a sea swim with her. It was February. It was cold. I had just rolled out of my deliciously warm bed. But having spent the last year saying ‘No’ to all her requests (Can I see a friend? No. Can I go out? No. Can I…
THE BODY ON GRIEF
The pandemic has been a testing time for all of us. But for me and my family, our darkest ‘hour’ came in December. We lost two of the most important men in our lives: my almost-step-father died after a long illness in a distant nursing home, unable to see family or friends; a week after…
WHY A 12 MINUTE WALK IS ALL IT TAKES (AND A SPECIAL OFFER)
This week a recent report on exercise caught my eye. As the days shorten and darken, as the weather closes in, those long walks we all took in the magnificently sunny lockdown #1 don’t seem quite so appealing. For those of us in the UK, lockdown #2 has been subject to repeated deluges of rain,…
AIR PURIFIERS AND THE PERFECT SAUCE TO PEP UP STEAMED GREENS
We’ve been promising to write about air purifiers for a few months. Thank you to the readers who reminded us to get on with it! As it happens, our timing is good: experts have just called for air purifiers to be installed into the schools most affected by air pollution. And because green veggies have…
CAN YOU EAT TO BEAT POLLUTION?
Worried about pollution? We are too. This week, researchers announced that air pollution is now killing more people than smoking. The new study focuses on ozone and PM2.5 (they’re the tiny particles of Particulate Matter invisible to the naked eye but able to penetrate our lungs and – possibly – cross into our blood). The…
GREEN SPACE IS GOOD FOR YOUR HEALTH
Do you have time in the countryside planned this summer? I hope so. If not, find a bit of green space nearby (city parks are great) and aim for some Green Time every day. We’ve been singing the praises of trees and the great outdoors for some time now, but in the last few weeks…
WHY WE NEED TO SPICE UP OUR LIVES and SPICED PARSNIP SOUP
I was flicking through The Times earlier this week, when I spotted – buried away on page 14 – a short piece about pharmaceutical giant, Pfizer: Pfizer gives up on dementia research. Pfizer has said it will no longer be researching treatments for Alzheimer’s. The company has also stopped investing in a cure for Parkinson’s….
HOW TO AVOID BOWEL CANCER & BEST EVER SQUASH SOUP
In my distant youth, I was a vegan. Not for health reasons but for animal welfare reasons. Those were the days when there was no such thing as organic or free range. The Body Shop (a British cruelty-free cosmetics chain) had recently opened in my home city of Brighton and the cruelties of factory farming…
WHY YOU NEED MORE SPERMIDINE … AND WHY WE STILL LOVE CHEESE
Yes, you read that correctly. No, it’s not exactly what you’re thinking. Spermidine is a polyamine that was first found in human semen but has since been found in almost all human tissue. We wrote about polyamines two years ago, in a post that has become one of our most frequently read. It’s worth reading…