The Long Game | Dr Alex

Dr Alex Wibberley

Hi! I'm Dr Alex, an Emergency Medicine doctor in the UK sharing what I've learned after almost a decade of working on the frontline, to help you avoid the preventable illnesses I see every day.

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S1 · E60
Yesterday · 31 min
How To Eat To Lower Your BAD Cholesterol (And Avoid Statins)
High cholesterol on a blood test and told to just cut back on fat and come back in six months? That advice misses almost everything that actually matters. In this episode I walk through the one number on your blood test that really counts, LDL cholesterol, and why a high HDL does not cancel it out. I also cover the portfolio diet, the combination of plant sterols, soluble fibre, plant protein and nuts that has been shown to bring LDL down by around 30 percent in research trials, plus the one simpler swap that does most of the work if that feels like too much all at once. We get into the egg question properly, why your liver makes far more cholesterol than you could ever eat, and what is really happening inside your liver when you swap saturated fat for polyunsaturated fat. I explain why going low fat often backfires when the fat gets replaced with refined carbs instead, and what a realistic two week plan looks like before you get retested. The full list of research references is in the description of the YouTube version. Disclaimer: This is not personal medical advice and does not override what your doctor says. #dralex #cholesterol #nhs
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S1 · E59
Yesterday · 29 min
Everything You’ve Heard About Protein Is Wrong (Eat Double!)
A lot of you sent me the same podcast clip recently, where a well known nutrition professor says the protein guideline is plenty and the whole obsession with eating more is overblown. He is right about quite a bit of it. Protein deficiency barely exists in Britain or America. Protein shakes and bars are mostly just marketing. You can get everything you need from whole food, plants included. Here is where I still disagree. The official number was built to stop an average, largely sedentary population from becoming deficient. It was never designed to be the amount you aim for if you actually want to stay strong as you get older. Your body has nowhere to store spare protein. Eat more than you use and your liver just strips it down and either burns it or turns it into fat. So protein only does its job when there is somewhere for it to go, and that somewhere is exercise. Strength work at least twice a week, carrying your own shopping, getting off the floor without help well into your eighties. That is the target worth building towards. If you are training regularly, somewhere around 1.2 to 1.6 grams per kilo of body weight, coming from eggs, beans, fish, nuts and a sensible amount of meat, is a reasonable thing to aim for. If you are not moving much at all, sort that out first before worrying about the number. One caveat worth repeating here. If you have any degree of reduced kidney function, this is a conversation to have with your own doctor before changing anything, not something to do off the back of a podcast. The full list of research references for this episode is in the description of the YouTube version. Disclaimer: This is not personal medical advice and does not override what your doctor says. #dralex #protein #health
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S1 · E58
Thursday · 17 min
How 3 Minutes of Planking Every Day Helps You Live Longer
Three minutes a day, split into three short bursts, is all it takes to work the muscles that quietly hold you upright every time you stand up, carry the shopping or reach into a cupboard. A plank trains the deep muscles wrapping around your middle rather than the ones you see in the mirror, and that is exactly why it matters so much as you get older. In this video I go through what a plank actually does to your blood pressure, your balance and your chances of a fall, what it does for a lower back that keeps aching, and how to build up to it if you cannot hold one for more than a few seconds right now. I also show a simple variation at the end that turns this from a basic core hold into something much closer to a proper workout. The full list of research references for this video is in the description of the YouTube version. Disclaimer: This is not personal medical advice and does not override what your doctor says. #dralex #planking #corestrength
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S1 · E57
Thursday · 50 min
Why 8 Hours Isn't Enough: How To Sleep Properly
Eight hours is probably the most repeated number in sleep health, yet so many people hit it every night and still wake up exhausted. That number was never a personal target. It is simply the middle of a range, and it only ever measures how long you lie in bed, not how much actual sleep your brain gets. In this episode I break down what really determines sleep quality. Deep sleep is loaded into the first half of the night and handles physical repair, while REM sleep builds through the second half and processes emotion and memory. Losing time from either end costs you very different things, even if the hours lost look the same on paper. I also talk through sleep efficiency, why sleep apnoea so often goes unnoticed, why alcohol wrecks the second half of your night, and why a large UK Biobank study found that sleep regularity predicted risk of death more strongly than sleep duration did. I cover caffeine timing, morning light, restless legs, and why cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia is recommended ahead of sleeping tablets. This episode is sponsored by Somnipods, the earbuds I have been using myself to deal with noise disruption overnight. The full list of research references is in the description of the YouTube version of this video. Disclaimer: This is not personal medical advice and does not override what your doctor says. #dralex #sleephealth #nhsdoctor
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S1 · E56
Wednesday · 19 min
Protect Your Leg Muscles! Eat These 7 Foods to Get Stronger
Your leg muscles are often the first to weaken as you get older, usually because of years of sitting more and moving less. What you eat plays a direct role in how much of that muscle you keep. In this episode I go through seven foods that help protect your leg muscles as you age, including eggs, oily fish, dairy, lean red meat, beetroot and leafy greens, pulses, and extra virgin olive oil, and why the timing and quality of your protein matters just as much as the amount. The full list of research references for this episode is in the description of the YouTube version. Disclaimer: This is not personal medical advice and does not override what your doctor says. #dralex #muscle #nutrition
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S1 · E55
Wednesday · 21 min
7 Foods I Never Eat as a Doctor (And What I Eat Instead)
Here are seven foods I try to avoid as a doctor, and what I eat instead. Processed meat, sugary drinks, sweetened breakfast cereal, anything deep fried, alcohol, protein bars and sliced white bread all come up often in conversations with patients, so I wanted to explain what is actually happening in the body with each one and the swaps I make in my own kitchen. This is not about judging the odd treat here and there. It is the pattern of the same choice repeated thousands of times over years that raises the risk of disease. Small daily swaps add up in the same way. The full list of research references is in the description of the YouTube version. Disclaimer: This is not personal medical advice and does not override what your doctor says. #dralex #preventativehealth #nhsdoctor
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S1 · E54
Tuesday · 19 min
Thyroid vs Metabolism: The Hidden Reason You Can't Lose Weight Even If Your Lab Tests Are Normal
Your thyroid gets blamed for a lot of stubborn weight gain, and sometimes that blame is fair. But very often someone is sent away with a normal blood test and told their thyroid is fine, with no explanation for how they actually feel. In this episode I go through what your thyroid actually does, what changes when it runs slow or fast, what a normal result on your test really means, and what tends to be going on when your results are fine but the weight still will not shift. A normal thyroid test is good news on its own, but it is only one piece of the picture. When it comes back clear, that should be the start of a proper conversation about what else might explain your symptoms, not the end of one. I also talk through why a properly underactive thyroid usually explains a few kilos rather than several stone, and why so much of what people assume is fat is actually fluid building up under the skin. For a lot of people, the bigger drivers sit elsewhere, in food quality, movement, sleep and stress, and none of that is said to make anyone feel guilty. The full list of research references for this episode is in the description of the YouTube version. Disclaimer: This is not personal medical advice and does not override what your doctor says. #dralex #thyroidhealth #weightloss
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S1 · E53
Tuesday · 17 min
Visceral Fat: The 5 Things That Actually Work vs. The Ones That Don't
You can be a completely normal weight and still be carrying the type of fat that does the most damage over time. Visceral fat sits deep around your liver and intestines rather than just under your skin, and it behaves very differently because of where it drains in your body. In this episode I go through five things with proper evidence behind them for shifting visceral fat. Losing body fat overall, aerobic exercise that gets you out of breath, the quality of the food you eat, getting enough regular sleep, and cutting back on alcohol and chronic stress. I also cover three things that get sold constantly but do very little. Ab exercises like crunches, fat burning supplements, and anything that makes you sweat around your middle like waist trainers or sauna belts. A simple way to check where you stand is a tape measure. Measure around the widest point of your waist and aim for a number that is under half your height. The full list of research references for this episode is in the description of the YouTube version. Disclaimer: This is not personal medical advice and does not override what your doctor says. #dralex #visceralfat #preventativehealth
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S1 · E52
Monday · 22 min
6 Ways to Boost Nitric Oxide to Lower Inflammation and Live Longer
Your body makes a gas called nitric oxide inside the lining of your blood vessels every single day, and it only survives for about a second before it disappears. It is so powerful that a synthetic version of it is used in emergency medicine during a heart attack. Nitric oxide tells the muscle in your artery walls to relax, which drops your blood pressure. But it also keeps the inner surface of your arteries smooth, so cholesterol and immune cells cannot stick and start building the plaques that lead to heart attacks and strokes. In this episode I go through six ways to raise your nitric oxide, including what you eat, a habit that might be sitting in your bathroom cabinet right now, how movement changes things even when you are not exercising, what your nose and sunlight have to do with it, and the one factor that matters more than any of the others, which is not making more nitric oxide but destroying less of it. The full list of research references is in the description of the YouTube version. Disclaimer: This is not personal medical advice and does not override what your doctor says. #dralex #nitricoxide #heartheath
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S1 · E51
Monday · 17 min
6 Warning Signs of Colon Cancer You Should Never Ignore
Bowel cancer usually gives warning signs long before it becomes serious, but those signs are easy to explain away as something you ate, stress, or just getting older. In this video I go through six warning signs of bowel cancer in order, from the easiest to miss through to the most serious one of all, which needs an ambulance. For each one I explain what it actually means in your body and what you should do about it, whether that is a routine GP appointment, a same day appointment, or a trip to A&E. The six signs covered are bloating that lasts three weeks or more, tiredness and breathlessness caused by hidden blood loss, a change in bowel habit that sticks around, losing weight without trying, bleeding from the back passage, and a blocked bowel. If you are in the UK and aged between 50 and 74, the NHS will post you a screening kit every two years. Screening does not cover you for new symptoms though, so please do not wait for a kit to arrive if something feels off. The full list of research references for this video is in the description of the YouTube version. Disclaimer: This is not personal medical advice and does not override what your doctor says. #dralex #boweldisease #preventativehealth
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S1 · E50
Sunday · 13 min
What Eating Walnuts Does to Your Risk of Dying (The Evidence Is Hard to Ignore)
A study following more than 90,000 people for around 20 years found that those eating a small handful of walnuts five or more times a week were about 14% less likely to have died by the end of the study than those who ate none at all. What makes walnuts stand out is that this isn't just one observation. A proper randomised trial handed people the nuts directly and then tracked heart attacks and strokes, and found a lower rate of those events in the group eating nuts regularly. In this episode I go through that large study, the trial behind it, what walnuts appear to be doing inside your blood vessels once eaten, and what this looks like in a normal week, including how much to eat and how to store them so they don't go off. The full list of research references for this episode is in the description of the YouTube version. Disclaimer: This is not personal medical advice and does not override what your doctor says. #dralex #walnuts #preventativehealth
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S1 · E49
Sunday · 20 min
The Truth About Cortisol: How Chronic Stress is Silently Destroying Your Health
Cortisol gets a bad reputation, but without it you would not survive the day. The real issue is that your stress system was built to handle a threat lasting a few minutes, while many of us are carrying pressure that lasts years. In this episode I walk through what cortisol does when it is working properly, what changes when stress never switches off, the signs worth noticing, why sleep sits right at the centre of all this, how movement and food shape the picture, and the part that happens purely in your own head through rumination. I also cover why adrenal fatigue is not a recognised diagnosis, what the evidence actually shows for supplements like ashwagandha, and why saliva cortisol tests are so hard to interpret. The full list of research references for this episode is in the description of the YouTube version. Disclaimer: This is not personal medical advice and does not override what your doctor says. #dralex #cortisol #stressmanagement
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S1 · E48
October 17 · 21 min
PSA Is 55% Accurate. This New Blood Test Claims 94%.
The PSA test that most men get offered is right about as often as a coin flip, and a newer blood test claims 94 percent accuracy. Both numbers need context before they mean anything. In this episode I go through what PSA actually measures, why catching a prostate cancer early does not always help the man it is found in, how the biopsy pathway has quietly changed for the better, and what this new 94 percent test can and cannot tell you. I also cover a second test from Sweden called Stockholm3 that I think deserves a lot more attention than it gets, and the screening decision the UK made this June that most people have misunderstood. The full list of research references is in the description of the YouTube version. Disclaimer: This is not personal medical advice and does not override what your doctor says. #dralex #prostatecancer #psatest
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S1 · E47
October 17 · 15 min
Is Your Brain Starving? The Vitamin Deficiencies Affecting Your Health After 50
Families often come into A&E convinced a parent is developing dementia, when forgetfulness, exhaustion and low mood can sometimes be traced back to something far simpler and far cheaper to check for. As we move past our 50s, the stomach lining naturally becomes thinner and produces less acid, which makes it harder to release vitamin B12 from food and harder for the body to absorb it. Two very common prescriptions, metformin for type 2 diabetes and PPIs for acid reflux, can also quietly reduce how much B12 the body takes in, especially the longer they are used. When B12 and other B vitamins like folate and B6 run low, a substance called homocysteine starts to build up, and higher levels have been linked to faster brain shrinkage and poorer memory. A small Oxford trial found that people with mild memory problems who took folic acid, B12 and B6 saw their brains shrink more slowly than those given a placebo over two years, particularly those who started with the highest homocysteine levels. It is an interesting result, though the study was small and larger trials have not shown the same clear benefit across the wider population. The most reliable way to protect these levels is through whole foods rather than supplements. Fish, shellfish, eggs and dairy provide B12, leafy greens, beans and lentils provide folate, and fish, poultry, potatoes and bananas provide B6. Supplements have their place for people on a vegan or vegetarian diet, those on medication that affects absorption, or anyone with a confirmed deficiency, but they are not a substitute for eating well. If you think this might apply to you or a relative, it is worth asking your doctor for a full blood count along with B12, folate, ferritin, thyroid function and HbA1c, since an underactive thyroid or rising blood sugar can cause very similar symptoms. Please do not stop any prescribed medication, including antidepressants, based on this video. Speak to your doctor first. The full list of research references is in the description of the YouTube version of this video. Disclaimer: This is not personal medical advice and does not override what your doctor says. #dralex #B12deficiency #BrainHealth
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S1 · E46
October 16 · 19 min
The Early Warning Signs Your Kidneys are Failing (and How to Protect Them)
Your kidneys can lose a huge amount of their working capacity before you ever feel anything wrong, which is exactly why kidney problems tend to get missed until they are much further along. In this episode I go through the early signs that are genuinely worth paying attention to, including frothy urine that does not clear after a minute, puffiness around your eyes in the morning, swelling in your ankles or lower legs, and needing to get up at night to pee more than you used to. I also cover the later signs that only appear once things are more advanced, the two tests that catch kidney problems long before any symptom does, and what actually protects your kidneys over the long run, including the role of blood sugar, blood pressure, certain painkillers, and diet. The full list of research references is in the description of the YouTube version of this video. Disclaimer: This is not personal medical advice and does not override what your doctor says. #dralex #kidneyhealth #preventativehealth
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S1 · E45
October 16 · 21 min
5 Meals That Melt Liver Fat (My Personal Recipes)
One in four scans I used to see in A&E had the same quiet little note at the bottom: fatty infiltration of the liver, incidental finding. No pain, no symptoms, just sat there until we went looking for something else entirely. The good news is that this is one of the most reversible things we talk about in lifestyle medicine. Studies show that meaningful weight loss and cutting back on added sugar can genuinely shrink liver fat, sometimes within weeks. Even swapping in resistant starch, the kind your gut bacteria feed on, seems to make a real difference. In this video I share five meals we actually cook at home, from overnight oats to a cold potato and mackerel salad, that lean on fibre, olive oil, oily fish, beans and resistant starch rather than the fast sugar hit that so much processed food gives your liver. The full list of research references for this video is in the description of the YouTube version. Disclaimer: This is not personal medical advice and does not override what your doctor says. #dralex #liverhealth #guthealth
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S1 · E44
October 15 · 21 min
6 Steps To Dissolve Plaque And Unclog Your Arteries Naturally
You cannot dissolve plaque like pouring a drain cleaner down a pipe. Plaque forms inside the wall of your artery, not on the surface, so there is nothing to simply rinse away. But the research does show three real things we can aim for. You can stop plaque getting worse. You can stabilise it so the cap toughens and becomes far less likely to burst. And in some trials, plaque has genuinely gone backwards. Two studies make this clear. The Ornish trial put patients with existing heart disease onto an intensive lifestyle programme and found most of that group showed some regression, while the group on standard care kept getting worse and had far more cardiac events over time. The ASTEROID trial took the opposite route, using a high dose statin, and used ultrasound scans to watch plaque actually shrink. Diet and medication are not competing with each other. They work on the same root causes, mainly cholesterol and inflammation, just by different routes. In this episode I walk through six practical steps that the evidence actually supports, covering your cholesterol numbers, the way you eat, how movement helps clean your arteries, calming chronic inflammation, managing stress properly, and which supplements are simply not worth your money. The full list of research references is in the description of the YouTube version. Disclaimer: This is not personal medical advice and does not override what your doctor says. #dralex #hearthealth #preventativemedicine
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S1 · E43
October 15 · 22 min
Why Our Grandparents Didn't Have IBS (The Truth About Food Evolution)
Your grandmother's kitchen in 1955 had a loaf of bread that took most of a day to make and cabbage sitting in a jar of brine. Your kitchen this morning probably has sliced white bread with a list of emulsifiers and preservatives longer than your hand. In this episode I go through six things that have changed in our food environment since around 1950 that help explain why IBS has become so common. These include how bread is made now compared to then, our disappearing fibre intake, the rise of emulsifiers in processed food, the loss of fermented foods from our diets, the impact of antibiotics on gut bacteria, and the way stress and rushed eating affect gut function. I also cover two common mistakes people make when trying to sort out their gut health themselves, including cutting out gluten before getting properly tested and misusing the low FODMAP diet. The full list of research references for this episode is in the description of the YouTube version. Disclaimer: This is not personal medical advice and does not override what your doctor says. #dralex #guthealth #IBS
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S1 · E42
October 14 · 23 min
Imagine Doctors Didn't Exist (Why We Keep Getting Sicker)
Imagine there were no doctors, no A&E, no statins, no insulin. Would you still make the same choices every single day? In this episode I talk about why the NHS was built to handle fast problems like infections, injuries and childbirth, and why it now spends most of its time trying to hold back slow problems like heart attacks, type 2 diabetes and fatty liver disease that take decades to build. I go through why ultra processed food is engineered to be hard to stop eating, what a tightly controlled feeding study found when people switched between processed and whole food diets, and why a diagnosis often comes with a tablet but very little education about what actually caused the problem in the first place. I also share what a real world weight management trial found when people diagnosed with type 2 diabetes were given structured support alongside their usual GP care, and why small daily choices matter so much more than they feel like they do in the moment. The full list of research references for this episode is in the description of the YouTube version. Disclaimer: This is not personal medical advice and does not override what your doctor says. #dralex #preventativehealth #nhs
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S1 · E41
October 14 · 19 min
After 10 Years in the ER, I Noticed These 4 Habits Keep People Young
After a decade in emergency medicine, Dr Alex noticed something odd. The age on the computer screen and the age on the trolley are often two completely different things. Some patients in their 80s felt decades younger than their notes suggested, while others much younger had become frail before their time. So what are the people who age well actually doing differently? In this episode Dr Alex shares four habits he has noticed again and again over years of shift work, none of which involve a supplement or a special diet. He talks through staying curious, processing setbacks instead of ruminating on them, thinking critically about health claims, and having a reason to stay well, a sense of purpose that pulls you through the day. He is upfront that these are his own clinical observations rather than a formal study, but he backs each point up with research where he can, including work on neuroplasticity, cortisol and chronic stress, and large studies linking a sense of purpose to heart health and memory in later life. The full list of research references is in the description of the YouTube version of this video. Disclaimer: This is not personal medical advice and does not override what your doctor says. #dralex #preventativehealth #healthyaging
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