Show Notes
Your eyes can lose around a third of their function before you ever notice anything is wrong, because your brain quietly fills in the gaps and hides the problem from you. In this episode I go through exactly how your eye works, why presbyopia from your mid forties onwards is normal ageing rather than a disease, and the difference between your eyes ageing at the pace they should and ageing faster than they should because of years of accumulated damage. I also cover a simple fifteen second test you can do at home to pick up on early changes in your vision, the symptoms that mean you need to be seen the same day rather than waiting for a routine appointment, floaters and when they actually matter, glaucoma, cataracts, sunglasses and the best time of day to wear them, and why your yearly eye test checks for far more than just whether you need new glasses. The full list of research references for this episode is in the description of the YouTube version. Disclaimer: This is not personal medical advice and does not override what your doctor says. #dralex #eyehealth #preventativehealth
More from The Long Game | Dr Alex
You can throw out your salt shaker completely and your blood pressure can still barely move three months later. That is not you doing something wrong. It usually means something underneath your diet has been pushing that number up for years. In this episode I go through five things that keep blood pressure high even when someone's diet already looks fairly sensible: where most of your salt actually comes from and the mineral that is missing alongside it, the hormone problem that runs quietly for years before anyone mentions diabetes, what ultraprocessed food does to your vessels beyond the salt it contains, the type of exercise that moves the number more than people expect, and the stress and sleep side of things, which I personally find hardest. The full list of research references for this episode is in the description of the YouTube version. Disclaimer: This is not personal medical advice and does not override what your doctor says. #dralex #bloodpressure #preventativehealth
After my last video on B12 deficiency, thousands of you said you recognised the symptoms, and hundreds told me your test came back normal while you still felt unwell. So this video is a proper follow up. I go through five things you can actually do if you think you might be deficient, starting with whether you have a genuine risk factor in the first place, such as age over 50, acid suppressing medication, metformin, nitrous oxide use, gut conditions like coeliac or Crohn's, or a diet with little or no animal products. Then I walk through the handful of symptoms that matter most and explain what is actually happening in your body for each one, from fatigue and breathlessness to tingling in your hands and feet, balance problems, and changes to thinking or mood. I also explain the testing pathway as it works in the UK and the US, why the standard blood test can miss a real deficiency, what the indeterminate zone means, and when tests like MMA or active B12 come into play. Finally I cover tablets versus injections, what the evidence actually says about each, and what I would honestly do if I were in your position trying to get this taken seriously by a doctor on a busy Tuesday morning. The full list of research references is in the description of the YouTube version. Disclaimer: This is not personal medical advice and does not override what your doctor says. #dralex #B12deficiency #preventativehealth
Your gut lining is rebuilt from scratch every few days, which means the food in your basket this week genuinely becomes the material your gut is made from next week. In this episode I go through the 12 foods that make it into our shopping basket every single week, from tinned sardines and extra virgin olive oil to kefir, sauerkraut, oats, tinned pulses, frozen berries, leafy greens, broccoli, walnuts, garlic and onions, and ground flax seed. I talk through what each one is actually doing once it reaches your gut, how that connects back to inflammation elsewhere in your body, and how we actually use these foods at home day to day. The full list of research references is in the description of the YouTube version if you want to look into any of it further. Disclaimer: This is not personal medical advice and does not override what your doctor says. #dralex #guthealth #antiinflammatory
High cholesterol on a blood test and told to just cut back on fat and come back in six months? That advice misses almost everything that actually matters. In this episode I walk through the one number on your blood test that really counts, LDL cholesterol, and why a high HDL does not cancel it out. I also cover the portfolio diet, the combination of plant sterols, soluble fibre, plant protein and nuts that has been shown to bring LDL down by around 30 percent in research trials, plus the one simpler swap that does most of the work if that feels like too much all at once. We get into the egg question properly, why your liver makes far more cholesterol than you could ever eat, and what is really happening inside your liver when you swap saturated fat for polyunsaturated fat. I explain why going low fat often backfires when the fat gets replaced with refined carbs instead, and what a realistic two week plan looks like before you get retested. The full list of research references is in the description of the YouTube version. Disclaimer: This is not personal medical advice and does not override what your doctor says. #dralex #cholesterol #nhs
A lot of you sent me the same podcast clip recently, where a well known nutrition professor says the protein guideline is plenty and the whole obsession with eating more is overblown. He is right about quite a bit of it. Protein deficiency barely exists in Britain or America. Protein shakes and bars are mostly just marketing. You can get everything you need from whole food, plants included. Here is where I still disagree. The official number was built to stop an average, largely sedentary population from becoming deficient. It was never designed to be the amount you aim for if you actually want to stay strong as you get older. Your body has nowhere to store spare protein. Eat more than you use and your liver just strips it down and either burns it or turns it into fat. So protein only does its job when there is somewhere for it to go, and that somewhere is exercise. Strength work at least twice a week, carrying your own shopping, getting off the floor without help well into your eighties. That is the target worth building towards. If you are training regularly, somewhere around 1.2 to 1.6 grams per kilo of body weight, coming from eggs, beans, fish, nuts and a sensible amount of meat, is a reasonable thing to aim for. If you are not moving much at all, sort that out first before worrying about the number. One caveat worth repeating here. If you have any degree of reduced kidney function, this is a conversation to have with your own doctor before changing anything, not something to do off the back of a podcast. The full list of research references for this episode is in the description of the YouTube version. Disclaimer: This is not personal medical advice and does not override what your doctor says. #dralex #protein #health