What is metabolic health?

Hi everyone, my name is Campbell Murdoch. I'm a GP and I have a special interest in metabolic health. Why am I interested in metabolic health? That's because the vast majority of modern diseases are caused by poor metabolic health. Things such as type 2 diabetes, prediabetes, obesity, fatty liver, high blood pressure, heart disease, strokes, some cancers, polycystic ovary syndrome, people's acid reflux, worsening of inflammatory conditions and some mental health problems. The list is endless and this is what I spend the majority of my time in general practice dealing with. But this brings a question what is metabolic health? The best way to think about this is think about the fact we need to survive and thrive. So we have to have fuel from our food to survive today and survive tomorrow. Our body needs to take in that food and deal with it. It needs to burn it or it needs to store it and it needs to do all of that whilst maintaining a sense of relative harmony and in biology and in medicine we call that harmony homeostasis. Homeostasis effectively means keeping things the same so no matter what's thrown at the body this harmony needs to be maintained homeostasis and the body uses various things for that including hormones such as insulin which lowers blood sugar. So good metabolic health is when the body is good at dealing with whatever's thrown at it. It will either burn it or store it easily and you can consider this the body is in peacetime. Poor metabolic health is when the body is struggling to maintain harmony and it struggles to maintain a normal blood sugar level for example and you get conditions like type 2 diabetes. You can consider this the body at wartime. More is being thrown at the body than it can deal with and it can't maintain harmony and it isn't having repair time. Now the good news is, and why I'm so interested in metabolic health, is no matter where your metabolic health is it can always be improved. Sometimes drastically, for example reversing type 2 diabetes, losing weight without being hungry and hopefully with all of this we're preventing all these diseases such as dementia that we've come to see as normal and equally and more aspirationally why I love it is that good metabolic health is about having a good day today and tomorrow.