Diabetes

Tending your microbiome Part 1

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HARNESSING THE POWER OF 100 TRILLION FRIENDLY BUGS This is the story of how you came to be home to an astonishing number and range of microbes. It’s one of the two hottest topics in health science now – the Human Microbiome and Epigenetics. The Human Microbiome is the sum of all the genes from … Read more

The fat gene – blame your ape ancestors

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Few animals – other than humans and our domestic pets – are troubled with weight issues or obesity. Now scientists at University College London, writing in Scientific American magazine, think they know why. A genetic mutation that occurred several million years ago in our ape ancestors could well be a cause of the modern problem … Read more

Health and fatness

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Dr Paul Clayton’s Health Newsletter Autumn 2015 We are getting fatter as a population, but we have not reached peak fat. If we let out our waistbands, and if our politicians cave in to the brazen attempt by the USA to drag our nutritional standards lower (via the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership TTIP), our … Read more

Vitamin K and Calcium

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Dr Paul Clayton’s Health Newsletter Autumn 2015 Vitamin K, and especially vitamin K2, has an important role in maintaining healthy calcium levels in various tissues. Specifically, it is one of the keys to keeping calcium and magnesium in the bones, where it is wanted, and preventing these minerals from building up in the soft tissues … Read more

Problems with emulsifiers?

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Dr Paul Clayton’s Health Newsletter Spring 2015 A new paper in Nature (Chassaing et al ’15) has shown that when mice consume high doses of the emulsifiers commonly used in processed foods, they develop changes in their microbiome and go on to develop gut inflammation, metabolic syndrome, and weight gain. At first sight this seems … Read more