Archive

This 20 minute Ted talk is definitely worth listening to and sharing with anyone worrying about summer exams, work deadlines or health in ageing. I have written about sleep before in my posts ‘sleep for performance’ and ‘sleep nutrition’ and believe research categorically shows that good sleep is really important for performance and beneficial for […]

The sun is finally out and all over the UK libraries are full with people stressing out about exams. Research shows that eating the right foods can benefit mood and motivation, improve focus, lower anxiety and strengthen memory formation and that the wrong choices can make you feel sluggish or jittery, making learning and recall more difficult. It is worth […]

Roar : How to match your food and fitness to your female Physiology for optimum performance, great health and a strong lean body for life. ROAR was recommended to me by Dr Craig Harrison, who said it was a must read and on that recommendation I bought it immediately. Initially I didn’t find it that […]

Drinks that claim to have health benefits are the largest and fastest growing segment of the functional foods sector. The market is growing at over 20% a year and health drinks are now commonly available in every local supermarket, petrol station and shop. Health claims range from simply boosting energy and immunity to improving cardio-vascular health, […]

Allium ursinum also known as ramson or wild garlic has a long tradition of medicinal use in many different countries, with reported anti fungal, antimicrobial, antiseptic, anti inflammatory, cytotoxic, antioxidant, expectorant, vasodilatory and cardio-protective effects. It is also used as a tonic for digestion; easing colic, treating loss of appetite and curing indigestion.  However, despite […]

In 1998 the Nobel Prize for medicine was given to three American pharmacologists for their discovery, that inside the body the  gas nitric oxide (NO) is an important mediator of a wide variety of vital bodily functions. At the time this was an amazing discovery and their initial work, done in the 1980s resulted in a […]

I have read many articles, books and scientific papers that promote the value of assimilating marginal gains, the process of making a change, testing that change and then improving on it, slowing increasing performance. This type of process has been credited with the breakaway performance of UK Cycling over the last decade and is now used […]

Caffeine for Sports Performance by Louise Burke, Ben Desbrow and Lawrence Spriet Caffeine for Sports Performance was first published in 2013 and even two years later is the most complete text on the effects of caffeine, offering a good review of all the research that was available at the time. Despite being effectively an extended […]

Five years ago I turned up at a nutrition conference with hands died purple from blackberry picking. When asked what I had been doing, I innocently said making jam, not realising the commotion this would cause. For many people jam = refined sugar and anything with a large proportion of refined sugar is seen as BAD. But I […]

If you read my piece ‘Importance of your gut for performance – What GCSE and A-Level Biology doesn’t tell you‘ and wanted to know more, Giulia Enders book is almost certainly the best place to start. Giulia Enders is a doctoral student in Germany studying microbiology. She first came to prominence when a 10minute presentation she […]