Hi everyone,
You've probably seen the Steven Bartlett "winegate" situation doing the rounds recently. For anyone who missed it: the podcaster said in an interview that that three glasses of wine “ruined his life” by derailing his motivation, sleep and focus for three days and the internet had thoughts. A lot of them. The backlash has been loud, with people sharing their own anti-wellness habits: late-night scrolling, skipped gym sessions, burgers, a proper night out. The general message being, essentially, just have fun.
I have some sympathy with both sides. Over-optimisation is real and can be exhausting, and I say that as someone who has, at times, worried about this stuff far more than was useful. But I also think some people need to go quite far in one direction before they find their own middle ground. The truth is, three glasses of wine genuinely does affect some people far more than others — that's not catastrophising, it's just biology.
Something that comes up on The Health Review podcast a lot lately is that the future of health is shifting towards personalisation. No one-size-fits-all approaches. For some that means early bedtimes and no wine, for others it means nights at the pub to connect with friends.
The most useful thing any of us can do is get curious about our own patterns, rather than measuring ourselves against someone else's.
This week we're looking at exactly that: personalisation, self-knowledge, and moving away from self-punishment towards something that actually fits your life.
Emily x
💊 Why Ozempic fails for one in ten people
About one in ten people carry genetic variants that make them resistant to GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic, even when their bodies produce higher-than-normal levels of the hormone these drugs mimic. Researchers at Stanford Medicine and international collaborators identified two variants in an enzyme called PAM that appear to blunt the drugs' blood-sugar-lowering effect. In clinical trial data covering over a thousand people with diabetes, only around half as many carriers hit recommended blood sugar targets after six months compared with non-carriers. The findings don't yet extend to weight loss, and the exact biological mechanism remains unknown. Still, scientists say this is a first step toward using genetics to match patients to the most effective diabetes therapy sooner.
🦠 Baby gut health and brain development are linked
The bacteria your baby's gut develops during their first year may help shape their neurodevelopmental path, even if their biology at birth suggests a higher risk of autism or ADHD. A study published in Cell Press Blue by researchers at The Chinese University of Hong Kong found that two specific bacteria were associated with lower signs of ASD and ADHD by age three. Factors like delivery method, breastfeeding, antibiotic exposure, and having older siblings all influenced which microbes took hold. The researchers are careful to stress this is a small piece of a complex puzzle, and that targeted probiotics are a future goal, not something available yet. Interesting, not actionable — for now.
🫐 Not all five-a-day is equal — and most of us are missing a key heart-protective compound
A study of 30,000 people from the US and UK found that fewer than one in five people get enough flavanols — antioxidants that support heart health, circulation and blood vessel elasticity — into their bodies each day, even among those regularly eating five portions of fruit and vegetables. The research, published in Food and Function, found that specific food choices matter far more than the total amount eaten. The target to aim for is around 500mg of flavanols per day — and the best sources include plums, cranberries, blackberries, green tea, broad beans, cherries and apples with the skin on.
🧬 GLP-1 drugs may slow biological ageing
Semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy, may do more than manage weight and blood sugar — researchers at UC San Diego suggest it may also slow biological ageing. The study looked at molecular markers that track how quickly the body is ageing at a cellular level, and found the drug was associated with a measurable slowdown in those markers. It's early-stage research, and the study design means we can't say the drug causes slower ageing — only that the two appear linked. Still, it adds an intriguing new dimension to a drug class already reshaping medicine.
💪
The Trouble With Optimising Everything: What Winegate Actually Got Right (And Wrong)
Steven Bartlett said three glasses of wine ruined three days of his life, and half the internet decided that was the most annoying thing they'd ever heard. Both reactions tell us something true. Neither tells us the useful thing, which is that structure helps some brains function and breaks others, and the only sensible question is which one is yours.
Winegate was never about the wine
For anyone who missed it: on his podcast, Bartlett described three glasses of wine derailing his sleep, eating and motivation for three days, tracked on his Whoop. The backlash coalesced around a single sentiment: optimisation is killing fun. Radio DJ Greg James said it out loud. Thousands of people posted their burgers and nights out in solidarity.
Bartlett's experience is biologically plausible. Alcohol fragments sleep and elevates cortisol, and after at least a year of sobriety, his tolerance would have been on the floor. A 2026 Nature Health paper links alcohol to cardiovascular risk, while work posted in Nutrients suggests moderate drinking correlates with positive social health outcomes. Both can be true. What's unusual isn't that wine affected him. It's that he could narrate the mechanism in dopamine-and-cortisol vocabulary, on a sponsored wearable, to millions of people.
Structure is genuinely protective for some brains
Here's the bit the anti-wellness conversation tends to miss. For people whose neurology makes self-regulation harder, routine isn't a vanity project. A 2025 narrative review of 132 studies on ADHD and physical activity found that regular exercise improved executive function, attention, inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility. Aerobic work sharpened sustained attention; high-intensity training helped impulse control; coordinative activity boosted flexibility.
The review is careful: adherence is a known problem in ADHD populations, and physical activity sits alongside medication and behavioural treatment, not in place of them. But the direction of travel is clear. A consistent morning walk, a non-negotiable bedtime, a protein-forward breakfast: these aren't moral achievements - they're scaffolding. For some people they're the difference between a functional week and a chaotic one.
Discipline as a tool is fine. Discipline as a personality is where it gets weird.
When the dial goes from useful to punishing
Clinical psychologist Catherine Houlihan argues that the optimisation mindset carries many of the hallmarks of perfectionism — constant pursuit of an ideal, fear of getting it wrong, identity tied too tightly to outcomes. The research on perfectionism is well established, even if the research on wellness optimisation specifically is still catching up.
A 2025 study in Frontiers in Psychiatry made a useful distinction: there's a difference between having high standards and the relentless feeling that you're falling short of them. The first — wanting to do well — was associated with more life satisfaction. The second was a consistent predictor of depression, anxiety and stress. It's a small study and not a population-level verdict, but the split is worth holding onto. Wanting to function well isn't the problem. The feeling that you're never quite getting there is.
Wearables sit awkwardly in this space. An HRV score or a poor sleep report is just information. The optimisation frame turns it into evidence of failure.
Treat structure as a dial, not an identity
The useful question isn't "is wine bad" or "is tracking bad". It's how much structure your particular brain and life need this week, and whether breaking a habit produces a useful recalibration or disproportionate distress. If skipping the gym once ruins three days, the gym may not be the problem. The most honest thing I can offer is the prompt I keep coming back to myself: notice when a habit is serving you, and notice when defending it from interruption has started to cost more than the habit gives back.
This feature is for educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Always consult your own doctor before making changes to your health.
The Hidden Psychological Cost of Our Tech Obsession — A Cyberpsychologist Explains
AI is built to become more like humans, and we're being nudged to become more like machines. Are we meeting in the middle? Cyberpsychologist Dr. Elaine Kasket believes we are...