Today is Clean Air Day. I'm writing this article because too many of us do not breathe clean air. We suffer health problems and die too soon because we do not breathe clean air. That needs to change.

This is a topic that I've been talking about a lot lately, especially after the World Health Organisation released new data on air pollutionlast month, including stats like:

• 9 out of 10 people worldwide breathe polluted air; and

• Air pollution causes 1 in 9 deaths worldwide.

I was invited be part of a Channel 4 News feature to help raise awareness on how air pollution affects people with cystic fibrosis. You can see my (very short!) clip in this piece on the UK’s most polluted areas.

Ten months ago, I quit my job to save my health. You can read more about why I did that in my article from October 2017.

Last month, I was featured talking about my career change in the latest issue of CF Life magazine from the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, so I thought now would be a great time to write an update on what has changed since I left a high-pressure, full-time job last summer.

I’ve had a lot of conversations with my female friends lately about the benefits of using menstrual cups instead ‘conventional’ products at that time of month.

From the dozens of conversations I’ve had, I can tell you that the benefits of using a menstrual cup are pretty compelling, so I thought it was time I shared a little more information...

I’ve written quite a lot about food intolerance since I’ve suffered with a lot of digestive issues myself and needed to control them to optimise my own health. While I gave an overview of types of food intolerance in this guide, I’ve not covered lactose intolerance specifically.

A lot of people seem to report lactose intolerance, but it actually seems to be commonly misunderstood. Did you know, for example, that lactose intolerance is thought to affect only around 5-16% of people in the UK? A far lower number than I often see being thrown around on social media.

Because of these kinds of misunderstandings, a lot of people self-diagnose or follow overly-restrictive diets.

There was a point in time where I suspected that I had issues digesting milk. I didn’t know if it was due to a milk protein, lactose, or perhaps something else in my diet entirely, that I happened to consume at the same time.

While I have tried to reduce my cow’s milk intake for sustainability reasons anyway, I felt it was important, from a health perspective, to better understand what could be negatively affecting my body. So, I took a lactose intolerance test.

This article draws from my own experience as well as research into exactly what lactose intolerance is, why the rates vary among different populations around the world, how you can test to see if you actually have it.

But before we get started, here’s a fun fact: when I was younger, I thought that ‘lactose intolerance’ was ‘like toast and tolerance’ and was some kind of idiom that I didn’t properly understand yet.

Thankfully, I understand it now. So here we go.

There are few public health issues of greater importance than antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in terms of impact on our society. This is a global crisis. And no, I’m not being dramatic. I've been affected by it myself.

While this is an issue far bigger than any one of us, we do have some control over it, if we each take responsibility and act now. By educating ourselves, and sharing information with our friends and family (and anyone else that will listen!), we are playing an important role that shouldn’t be underestimated. 

The main point I want to make with this article is that the vast majority of the information in these books should be common knowledge.

I can’t stress that enough.

It horrifies me to think that this incredibly valuable information is out there, pretty much for free, and yet some people are never exposed to it.

Here are 4 must-read books to help you improve your health + nutrition.

Ladies, do you do pelvic floor exercises? 

Honestly?

I’m sure, like me, you’re aware of how important they are. Yet, also like me, when it comes to training these muscles, you’ll probably remember that they exist every fortnight or so, and exercise them by squeezing ‘down there’ how ever many times you deem useful (10, 15, 20 times?) before getting distracted by something else.

Needless to say, there are lots of things wrong with training your pelvic floor muscles in this way:  
* You don’t really know if you are squeezing the muscles correctly  
* You aren’t sure if you are squeezing for long enough, hard enough, or a many times as you should  
* You don’t have any way to measure your progress  
* It’s boring as hell, making it very easy to become distracted

Thankfully, some very clever ladies out there have designed a sleek little gadget and app called Elvie to overcome all of these problems.

But first, here's why doing kegels is important in the first place...

Your heart rate (HR) is a useful measure of your activity level and training intensity when exercising. When your exercise intensity increases, your heart rate also increases to match the increased rate of energy expenditure and oxygen uptake. 

Heart rate can be expressed as the absolute number of beats per minute (bpm) or as a percentage of your maximum heart rate (% HRmax). 

Knowing your heart rate in bpm at any point in time may not be a very useful measure on it’s own. So, to put it in context, it’s a good idea to have some ideas of where you sit across other heart rate measures...

Good health is achieved from the optimisation of the elements in the ‘health triangle’; a trinity of nutrition, training and sleep. While all of these elements work together, even the best training routine and nutrition programme cannot compensate for insufficient rest from good quality sleep.

Sleep duration and quality can affect many things, including muscle recovery and building, weight loss and maintenance, hormone levels that influence your overall health, athletic performance, and cognition. 

So, here's what you need to know about sleep, as well as a definitive list of all the ways (according to both sceience and my own experience) that you can induce and improve your sleep.
 

It’s no secret that I’m fascinated by health monitoring and the increasingly amazing options for tracking our health and fitness that are coming about thanks to new tech.

Over two and a half years ago, I watched an episode of BBC Horizon called Monitor Me, which I think was a cataylst for my curiosity.

Since then, I have tried things like tracking my nutrient intake with MyFitnessPal and recording my activity and workouts with fitness trackers, but as I mentioned in my article on wearable tech, I struggle to find the value in using any devices over an extended period of time.

I think part of the reason that I was so fascinated by Monitor Me, was that everyone featured on the show was recording their data for really specific purposes; they knew what they were looking for in their data and they had a specific outcome in mind, be it weight-loss or better sporting performance. Plus, they were working with professionals in their field.

This kind of structure is something that I’ve lacked so far when toying with health and fitness tech, simply because I haven’t needed it.

Now, that has changed.

I’ve pushed my interest a little further and got involved with a clinical trial to see if self-monitoring can have a direct, positive effect on health.

I’m super fascinated by health monitoring. I love the quantified self movement. I love that there is an ever evolving arm of science and technology that can help us to get a better handle on the state of our health.

Yet, I’ve never been enamoured by fitness trackers.

In fact, I would go as far as to say I am sick of fitness trackers, having acquired and forgotten about at least half a dozen already. 

When I find heard that DNA fitness and diet testing had emerged on the consumer market, I was 100% fascinated. I loved the concept of a plan based on my unique DNA. 

As you will likely have read, I have taken tests based on blood samples, but unlike DNA, these are fluid and changeable, where your DNA is fixed. I like this idea and it made me think that DNA testing could be more useful in the long-term. 

I was keen to know what my DNA could tell me, and whether it could help me further improve my health through fitness and diet. 

Has this feeling stuck around after speaking to some experts and trying a couple of DNA fitness tests for myself? Read on to find out...

We are becoming so much more aware of what we put into our bodies. We’re eating clean and using natural skincare. Yet, many of us are pumping ourselves full of synthetic hormones.

Hormones are chemical messengers that coordinate complex processes from growth and metabolism, to fertility. Your body relies on them completely to maintain a healthy, natural balance. 

Most contraceptive methods involve exposing your body to synthetic hormones through a tablet or some kind of implant. There are different hormones that can be used either alone, or in combination, to disrupt your natural hormonal balance to make you temporarily infertile.

Your period is a window into your health. Issues like your period disappearing (amenorrhea) or experiencing symptoms usually dismissed as 'pre-menstrual syndrome' can actually be indicators of your health on a wider scale. By masking these insights, you might even be putting your body at risk.