Strength For Health

15/04/2026

Strength training once a week produces remarkable results yet takes very little time and effort out of your life. I guess I must be doing something right as I have very low turnover amongst my clients but I have had a couple of spaces open up on Thursday (late morning and early afternoon). I can also squeeze in another shift worker or two who needs to be able to train on different days during the week. If you are interested in finding out more, please send me a message and we will sort out a time for you to come and meet me and see the gym.

15/04/2026

This graphic (and accompanying text) should make you stop and think. High cholesterol is just not that big a deal when it comes to heart disease. Certainly not compared to other things. Leaving aside smoking, all the issues in orange and red are essentially the same thing: insulin resistance and high insulin levels (hyperinsulinemia) - IR/HI.

High blood pressure goes hand in hand with IR/HI which is the thing that makes you overweight and leads to developing type two diabetes (T2D). Taking a pill to bring your blood pressure down does not change your IR/HI. Taking another pill (or an injection) to bring your elevated blood sugar down does not change your IR/HI (injected insulin actually makes it worse). Taking a pill to bring your cholesterol down has been linked to increasing the likelihood of developing diabetes (and does nothing to reduce your IR/HI)!

The primary thing that drives IR/HI is eating carbohydrates (not just sweet sugars, but starches too). No medicine in the world can counter the effect of carbohydrates on your body. No amount of exercise will counter this effect in the long-term either (former Olympic rowing champions, life-long marathon runners and current Ironman triathletes have all developed T2D). The only thing that works is reducing carbohydrate consumption to a level that your body can handle and, for some of us, that means virtually none at all.

Taking medication to counteract too much carbohydrate food is like adding menthol to ci******es to make you breathe more easily while doing nothing to reduce your risk of developing lung disease.

The post I shared is American so it recommends certain blood tests that are harder to get in the UK. But there is a simple test we can all do at home: measure your waist and height. Ideally you want your waist measurement (taken around your bellybutton) to be less than half your height. If your waist is increasing over time your health is heading in the wrong direction. This measurement matters far more than your weight on the scales.

The human body is supposed to have stored fat. Being really lean is not particularly healthy. We should all be able to pinch an inch (because fat stored under the skin is not particularly unhealthy). But if you are gaining fat - especially if it is around your waistline - then that is an indication that you probably have elevated insulin. Insulin is the primary fat storage hormone and when insulin is high your body can't access stored fat so people end up overweight, lacking in energy and genuinely hungry.

Please stop worrying about cholesterol and focus on what really matters instead.

WHY IS YOUR DOCTOR OBSESSED WITH LDL?

Your doctor obsesses over your LDL cholesterol. Here's what JAMA Cardiology says actually predicts heart disease:

• Diabetes -> 10x risk
• Metabolic syndrome -> 6x risk
• Severe obesity -> 4.7x risk
• Smoking -> 4x
• Hypertension -> 4x

Now look at what your doctor is focused on:

• LDL cholesterol -> 1.4x
• Total cholesterol -> 1.0x

Read that again. Total cholesterol has essentially ZERO predictive power for heart disease in younger adults. (Dugani et al., JAMA Cardiology, 2021)

Metabolic factors have hazard ratios of 4–10x.

The lipid markers that drive $15 billion in statin prescriptions? 1.0–1.5x. They're treating the wrong thing. They've ALWAYS been treating the wrong thing.

Your doctor never tested your fasting insulin. Never calculated your Trig/HDL ratio. Never ordered a CAC score. But they sure as hell tested your LDL and wrote you a statin script. That's not medicine. That's marketing.

Ask your doctor for these tests at your next visit:

- Fasting insulin (not just glucose)
- HbA1c
- hsCRP (inflammation)
- Trig/HDL ratio
- ApoB
- HOMA-IR

Print this. Bring it. Demand the full picture.

The truth heals. Don't accept to be plugged on useless statins just because LDL and total cholesterol are high. Those are useless parameters which day nothing much about what is going on.

08/04/2026

It is not often that I get a chance to train with my favourite client/training partner/wife but we managed to do so at the weekend thanks to us being on holiday. Elaine is wearing a t-shirt designed by fellow fitness trainer, Elizabeth Davies, who runs a business called This Woman Lifts. It reads, ‘Training for my old lady body’. My mum, who will be 81 this week, wears one of these t-shirts in the gym too. I read Elizabeth’s new book last week and she has a great concept – that applies equally to men and women – that I want to share:

Every time you train your body to become fitter and stronger it is like making a deposit into your pension scheme.

I’ve got to be honest, there are times when I wish that fitness training – whether in the gym, on my bike or out on a run – wasn’t so hard and didn’t leave me aching and sore afterwards. But I have learned that the aches and pains that come alongside being unfit are so much worse than the feelings I get as a result of doing some hard physical work. And I have no problem reminding myself that any downsides associated with getting fitter now are likely to be paid back multiple times over sometime in my distant future.

Every pound I put into savings or my pension is a pound that I would love to be spending on stuff and experiences right now; I mean, think of the holidays! But if I don’t invest now for my retirement I won’t be able to afford any holidays at all when I am older. People with more money saved and invested get more freedom to choose what they get to do when they are no longer earning. And people who are stronger, fitter and healthier have more options when they get older too.

Building strength and muscle is saving for the future. In general, people with more muscle live longer and healthier lives. People who are stronger and fitter are able to do more things now and in the future. Any downsides of finding the time and energy to devote to training now become very worth it in years to come.

If you are interested in investing in your future today, then please get in touch and let Strength For Health help you.

26/02/2026

It’s easy to think rest is the safest choice. A sore tendon? Protect it. Avoid stress. Wait for it to “get better.” Tendons don’t heal by hiding. They heal when you give them a reason to work carefully, progressively, and on purpose.

Avoiding stress forever feels safe. But the real path to pain-free movement and strength is deliberate action. Movement, done right, is what heals.

26/02/2026

Many of my clients are concerned about their cholesterol & blood pressure yet very few have even heard of insulin resistance (caused by abnormally high insulin levels). Yet insulin resistance is at the centre of most of the chronic illnesses many of us have to deal with (eg. heart diseases, type 2 diabetes, kidney disease, liver disease & many more). High insulin is the primary reason for having excess body fat & being unable to lose it, no matter how hard you diet.

Doctors routinely measure cholesterol & blood pressure but insulin is not part of the standard tests (though it easily could be). I wonder whether it has anything to do with the fact that there are drugs available to lower cholesterol & blood pressure but none to lower insulin? 🤔

What does lower your insulin down to normal, healthy levels? Cutting out carbs from your diet.

26/02/2026

The Strength For Health gym has changed a bit!

26/02/2026

24/02/2026

Every seven seconds someone, somewhere in the world dies from type 2 diabetes & it's complications.

Do you know that complications of T2D include heart attacks & strokes?

'Minor' complications are things like foot amputations, kidney disease & blindness...

Crazy thing is that T2D is almost entirely avoidable & reversible with the correct dietary approach. But you won't get that on the NHS, only drugs that slow but don't stop the disease.

"The world’s population is currently experiencing an epidemic of Type 2 diabetes… This makes Type 2 diabetes at least ten times more deadly than warfare… and makes producers of refined carbohydrates potentially more complicit in deaths than arms manufacturers."
https://ruminati.substack.com/p/from-hyperbole-to-understatement

21/02/2026

When I was a school (oh so many years ago now...) and reluctantly learning about biology (I found chemistry and physics so much more interesting in those days) I remember being taught about the organs of the human body. The surprise revelation was that skin was an organ! But nobody mentioned muscle or bone in that context. An organ is a part of the body that has a bio-chemical effect on other systems within the body and back then it seemed that the chemical contribution of muscle and bone was considered relatively inconsequential. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Unless you are very overweight, your muscles are the largest organ of your body.

In terms of immediate and short-term survival, we absolutely need our brain, heart, lungs and other internal organs to be functioning right now. But for long-term health, scientists are becoming increasingly aware of the impact the muscle and bone have one preserving and enhancing the function of other organs, not least, the brain.

For most of my life, the focus has been on cardiovascular exercise to try and increase cardiovascular health because heart disease still is the number one cause of death (though it only accounts for a little over 1/4 of all deaths). Strength training and muscle building barely got a mention. But science moves on and recent studies are showing that building muscle and using muscle (i.e. contracting that muscle hard by pushing and pulling against heavy resistance) has profound effects on all systems within the human body, the cardiovascular system included.

I am very happy with the name of my project, but there are times I think I should have called it 'Muscle for Health' instead. Nobody needs to be built like a bodybuilder to improve their health but we all need to understand that muscle is far more important to our health and well-being than being able to move our bodies around.

21/02/2026

Do you think you are too old to begin to lift weights?

21/02/2026

My clients know that I like to talk about nutrition, a lot. Well, I like to talk nutrition with those clients who appear to want to talk about nutrition anyway... Maybe I overshare sometimes - I do have a tendency to download my brain to anyone who appears willing to listen! - but I don't think I force information onto anyone who isn't interested.

Periodically someone mentions 'Blue Zones' as examples of where people live and eat the best way and live the longest. The trouble is that the Blue Zones are not quite what they are made out to be (this is very true of many, many claims made in the field of nutrition and health). These slides give such a nice explanation that I don't have to.

21/02/2026

Who would have thought that curling at the highest level requires serious strength training?

The reality is that many recreational athletes could be a lot better at their sports if they were a bit stronger. But the fear of becoming too big, too heavy, too bulky, too stiff (etc. etc.) is firmly embedded in many people who base their training plans on what they pick up from their peers. These were the prevailing beliefs in elite sport 20-30 years ago but sports science has moved on a long, long way since then.

If you want to become better at playing badminton at your local community centre, get a faster time in a 5k or 10k 'fun run' or walk longer in the hills you will probably find that an hour or two in the gym every week will stand you in much better stead than spending the same time practicing your skills or pounding the pavement.