TV presenter Dr Hilary Jones has launched a major new campaign to help boost our metabolism and keep the nation healthy.
More and more Britons are suffering and dying from a range of diseases related to lifestyle. Known as ‘the four horsemen of the west’, heart disease, dementia, cancer, and type-2 diabetes collectively cause over two-thirds of all deaths in the UK. And yet for most of us they can be prevented.
With the NHS in crisis, Dr Hilary Jones wants to make improving our nation’s health and preventing disease a priority, so he has launched the Boost Britain’s Metabolic Health Campaign to highlight the need to protect the nation from these killers.
The best bit is that doing so doesn’t require fancy drugs or hospital stays – instead, Dr Hilary wants to help people to take simple steps in their day to day lives that will improve their metabolic health; ultimately helping to protect them from these killer diseases, and also to rescue the NHS by saving billions.
“Our metabolism converts food into energy and creates the building blocks we need to repair our bodies, grow, and thrive. When this process malfunctions, our bodies become prone to chronic inflammation, internal imbalances like high blood sugar or cholesterol levels and weight gain. This dramatically increases our risk of serious health conditions, jeopardising our lives and health.
Smoking, alcohol, being overweight and eating the wrong foods can all damage our metabolism but the most common cause is simply time. As we age, our metabolism naturally becomes less efficient. This is one reason why it gets harder to stay slim and why our risk of things like heart disease, dementia, cancer, and type-2 diabetes increases with age.”
Your metabolism is a chemical process that’s constantly running inside every cell in your body. It provides you with energy and all the biological building blocks (like proteins and fats) that your body needs.
Our metabolism works very well when we’re young, but tends to become less and less efficient over time. This ‘internal ageing’ process is one of the main things which undermines our health as we get older.
When it’s not functioning well we’re more likely to feel the effects of age – from lacking energy and vitality or putting on weight more easily, through to developing arthritis, or suffering from health concerns like high blood sugar, blood pressure or cholesterol levels.
In severe cases, poor metabolic health can lead to ‘metabolic syndrome’, a condition which greatly increases our risk of developing conditions like diabetes, dementia or arthritis, suffering from a heart attack or stroke, or being diagnosed with cancer.
Making lifestyle changes is tough, and can be expensive – especially with the cost of living impacting our ability to source a range of healthy foods. But Dr Hilary believes it’s never too early or too late to make changes that set you on a path to a healthier future. And while we all know we should eat well and exercise more, Dr Hilary wants to shed new light on why these are so important for our long-term health due to the effect they have on our metabolism.
That’s why the Boost Britain’s Metabolic Health campaign is centred around Dr Hilary’s 5 Pillars of Metabolic Health – simple, small and all-natural steps that all of us can take to look after our metabolic health and reduce our risk of these common killers.
These pillars shed new light on why traditional health advice (like eating well or getting more exercise) are so important, as well as offering some shortcuts – such as saunas, cold-water swims or eating super-broccoli – for those of us who find making lifestyle changes tricky.
Exercise is a fantastic way to give your body a metabolic boost. Just going for a single short run or popping to the gym activates our body to start repairing itself from the inside-out, kick-starting your journey to a healthier future right from day one.
Longer-term, exercise is a great way to burn fat to stay at or get yourself back to a healthy weight. Being overweight forces our body to work much harder to stay healthy, so staying in shape gives our metabolic health a huge boost and hugely cuts the risk of getting sick. It’s Dr Hilary’s #1 tip for boosting your metabolic health.
Our bodies evolved to stay healthy on ancient diets. When we eat lots of fresh veg, fruits, nuts and fish, we give our bodies all the vitamins and minerals they need. Some of these foods also offer natural health-boosting molecules that help maintain and repair our metabolism, such as omega-3 from oily fish or sulforaphane from broccoli. And plants are full of fibre, meaning we feel full for longer. So getting plenty of these foods into our daily diet can give our health a huge boost and help keep us slim too!
But eating too much sugar, salt and high-calorie processed foods has the opposite effect. Our body has not evolved to live on a modern diet, and so struggles to process these foods properly. This leads to things like high blood sugar, blood pressure, cholesterol and putting on weight – all of which suggest our metabolism is suffering and put us at risk of developing more serious conditions like type-2 diabetes or heart disease.
Because what we put into our bodies has such a huge impact of our metabolism (and can help us avoid becoming overweight too!) it’s Dr Hilary’s second pillar of good metabolic health.
Some foods are not just healthy, but contain natural active ingredients which work magic on our metabolic health. Examples include turmeric, which seems to help fight inflammation, and broccoli, which contains a powerful active ingredient called sulforaphane that repairs our metabolism. Scientists are particularly excited by sulforaphane, since adding a lot of it to your diet has been linked to reducing the risk of everything from dementia to heart disease to diabetes to cancer.
Getting enough sulforaphane from normal broccoli is almost impossible, since broccoli only provides a small amount. So Dr Hilary is working with us here at SmarterNaturally, where we grow a super-broccoli (GRextra) that delivers five times more sulforaphane than normal. Clinical trials indicate that eating just one portion of this super-broccoli a week can help to repair and maintain our metabolism, reducing our risk of a huge range of diseases.
Alcohol and smoking have the opposite effect on our metabolism from these health-boosting functional foods. They cause damage to our body, disrupting our internal balance and driving chronic inflammation – giving us a greater risk of developing serious conditions like heart disease or cancer.
Every drink and every cigarette do a bit more damage, so even cutting back just a little will help give your metabolic health a boost. Make a small change today and tick off Dr Hilary’s fourth pillar.
Following in the footsteps of those healthy Norwegians, Finns and Swedes, it turns out that both saunas and cold-showers or cold-water swims are great for our metabolic health too. They work in a similar way to exercise: when we get very hot or very cold it kick-starts our body to start repairing any internal damage.
So if you feel like skipping the gym this week, why not add a sauna session, cold shower or cold-water swim to your weekly routine instead? It’s a Dr Hilary promise – your metabolic health and your future self will thank you!
Many of us are just learning about our metabolism and how important it is for our overall health and wellbeing – particularly as we get older. A healthier metabolism means more energy, a brighter mind and better long-term health, and Dr Hilary argues it’s achievable for all of us.
But we’re all human and making dramatic changes to our lifestyle is tough. That’s why Dr Hilary’s 5 pillars also include some shortcuts as simple tricks that anyone can use to give their metabolic health a boost – like eating SmarterNaturally’s super-broccoli!
Our super-broccoli is a uniquely powerful superfood, delivering a enough sulforaphane in each portion to keep you going all week. It’s the perfect way to support all your other efforts to repair and maintain your metabolic health, giving your body an internal boost to make staying healthy that little bit easier.
Support your metabolic health with GRextra – our unique super-broccoli.
Delivering up to 5x more sulforaphane than a standard broccoli, it’s the ultimate functional food for supporting health and longevity
-> Join the super-broccoli movement
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