What’s your favourite read? I love to read novels, but when I feel the need to come back to the real world, I love books on nature, health and history. Over the winter months I read a couple of books that have influenced my way of thinking about health and lifestyle. Both are backed by science and offer insights that were new to me. I thought I’d share some of the tips I’ve picked up from them - and hope you might benefit from some of this new found science.
The first book was by the late Michael Mosley: Just One Thing: How Simple Changes Can Transform Your Life - a very readable book, structured so you can easily envisage incorporating the tips into your daily routine.
As he says: ‘…In summary: this book is all about quick and simple scientifically proven ways to improve health and wellbeing in a reasonable way.’
Each tip is backed by well-controlled scientific studies, so you know you’re not wasting your time! Some of them are easier - drink coffee, eat dark chocolate and read, while others are less appealing - take a cold shower, change your mealtimes and perform various types of exercise. For each tip he explains how the activity affects our health and explains the science behind it, which helps - I find it easier to imagine all the good it’s doing when the reasoning is clear. I also like the fact that he suggests starting with just one (I’m going with the dark chocolate) and adding more over time. I’m planning to add some of the less pleasant ones into my routine soon, I promise…
The second book Food for Life is a dense read, written by Tim Spector, a professor of genetic epidemiology and an expert on the gut microbiome. In this book he summarises recent studies involving enormous numbers of participants, which have improved our understanding of which foods are really beneficial, and which are not, and that as individuals, we vary enormously in how we metabolise different foods.
On society’s obsession with nutrients, superfoods, and vitamins, and the confusion around what foods are really good for us he states: ‘Many of our problems around the science of food come down to over-simplifying the properties of foods and our responses to them. I want to restore the complexity and the wonder to our food. I want to show you what we now do know about food, but also what we don’t yet know.’
The book provides a lot of detail about how the gut microbiome affects our health, which foods can result in a healthier microbiome, and why. There is too much in this book to summarise so I've listed a few of the author’s take-home recommendations:
- Move away from ultra-processed food
- Sleep well and exercise regularly
- Allow occasional long fasting intervals
- Eat up to 30 different plant foods a week, including nuts, spices and seeds
- Eat something fermented every day
- Eat fungi regularly
- Understand that food is medicine and the right diet can be as effective as many drugs
I hope you manage to incorporate some healthy habits into your life this spring, including a bit of chocolate, a cup of coffee and a good read.
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