Hi everyone,
After the longest day of the year, it finally feels as though we’re well and truly in the midst of summer — and the UK wellness world seems to be having its own moment in the sun. Last week, I attended both the IPM Conference and the Healf Summit in London, and it was genuinely uplifting to speak to medical experts, practitioners and brand founders about where they believe the industry is heading.
One theme came up a few times: the growing number of GPs and doctors training in more holistic, root-cause approaches to health. What was once dismissed as fringe or alternative is increasingly moving into the mainstream — becoming more personalised, preventive and data-driven, while still drawing on ancient practices and a deeper understanding of the whole person. It feels like the future of wellness may not be about choosing between conventional medicine and holistic health, but finding a more intelligent way to bring the two together.
Emily x
🦠 Could your gut bacteria lift your mood?
If you're taking antidepressants, adding a daily probiotic might give them a small extra boost, at least according to early evidence. A small clinical trial in older adults with moderate depression found that those who took a daily probiotic alongside their usual antidepressant saw somewhat greater reductions in depression and anxiety than those on placebo alone. Both groups improved, so the probiotic wasn't doing the heavy lifting, With only 58 participants, this is firmly in the "promising but preliminary" category. A larger trial is planned.
🦠 Vaginal microbiome testing is having a moment
A viral post about biohacker Bryan Johnson’s girlfriend’s vaginal microbiome test result may have started the conversation — but the bigger story is what happened next. Across social media, fertility doctors and women’s health experts have been using the moment to explain why the vaginal microbiome matters far beyond “wellness optimisation”. Unlike the gut, where diversity is usually seen as a good thing, vaginal health is often associated with a low-diversity microbiome dominated by protective Lactobacillus species, particularly Lactobacillus crispatus. These bacteria help maintain an acidic environment, which may reduce the risk of bacterial vaginosis, recurrent infections and inflammation — all areas increasingly being discussed in relation to fertility and pregnancy health.
💉 The real GLP-1 revolution hasn't happened yet — experts say the next generation will change everything
A commentary published in Gastroenterology this week argues that while GLP-1 drugs have dramatically reshaped how obesity is treated, the next era of medicine will go significantly further — combining powerful weight-loss medications with minimally invasive procedures, metabolic surgery and precision medicine to deliver results no single drug can achieve alone. Beyond injections, oral GLP-1 pills are already arriving — removing the weekly needle that has put many people off.
🥩 Scientists say most people need more protein than current guidelines suggest
A new review from the University of Cambridge, published in Frontiers in Nutrition, argues that current public health recommendations for protein intake are built around the minimum needed to prevent deficiency in sedentary adults — not the amount needed to stay genuinely strong, sharp and independent over a lifetime. Author Dr Chris Macdonald argues that physically active people, older adults and pregnant women may benefit from significantly higher protein intake than current UK guidelines suggest, and that higher-protein diets also support fat loss through increased satiety and the thermic effect of food.
👵 Grandparents may be one of the most powerful tools we have against the youth mental health crisis:
A child psychologist says grandparents are more important than ever, as youth mental health challenges continue to rise. He argues that children need supportive relationships, meaningful conversations, and a sense of purpose—not just pressure to achieve. Grandparents can help by listening, encouraging, and creating positive experiences that strengthen emotional resilience. As well as providing support to parents, grandparents provide what Dr. Barish calls ‘molecules of emotional health’ – moments of listening and encouragement that strengthen children’s ‘emotional immune systems’.
When You Suppress One Emotion, Are Others Really Numbed in the Process?
Most of us weren't taught how to feel. We were taught how to perform. To be productive, self-reliant, composed — and to keep moving regardless of what was happening underneath the surface. It's often only when something stops working — the sleep, the patience, the ability to enjoy things — that we start to wonder what we've been pushing down, and for how long.
This question sat at the heart of my conversation this week with Suzy Reading, a chartered psychologist and author of ten books on self-care including her latest How to Be Selfish. Suzy works at the intersection of psychology, somatic therapy and nervous system health, and what she says about emotional suppression is something that has stayed in my mind ever since.
The good baby, the productive adult
The conditioning starts earlier than most of us realise. As Suzy puts it — a good baby doesn't cry, a good child doesn't talk back, a good adult is productive, self-reliant and doesn't need anybody else. By the time you're in your thirties or forties, the instinct to suppress what you're feeling and push on is so well rehearsed it doesn't even register as a choice.
But here's what the research actually shows. James Gross's work on expressive suppression — the technical term for habitually pushing emotions down — has linked it to lower positive affect and weaker physiological recovery after stress. It's not quite "numb one, numb them all," but the body doesn't sort feelings neatly into acceptable and unacceptable. When we suppress, we suppress broadly.
Suzy is more direct about it. We can't selectively dial down emotions, she says. We end up numbing them all. And the consequences show up not just psychologically but physically — in inflammation, autoimmune responses, disrupted sleep and appetite. The body keeps the emotional ledger even when the mind has stopped paying attention to it.
What emotional suppression actually looks like
It can look like waking at 4am with a flat, buzzing alertness you can't explain. Like feeling nothing in a situation when you probably should feel something. A stomach that's been off for months, a short fuse with your children or partner, a vague sense of flatness that productivity hacks never quite touch.
Suzy describes the endpoint of long-term self-abandonment as energetic bankruptcy — completely empty, nothing left in the tank, with no clear idea how you got there. And the reason most people don't catch it earlier is that we've been systematically distracted from our own internal signals. We don't know what we're feeling because we've never really been taught to look.
A small audit worth trying
If you want to understand your own patterns, Suzy suggests starting small. The hand on heart practice she describes in the episode — literally placing a hand on your chest, taking a breath, asking yourself what you're actually feeling — takes about thirty seconds. It sounds almost embarrassingly simple. But what it does is begin to rebuild the connection between you and your emotional interior.
For one week, try ending each day with a few questions. How long did it take me to come back to myself after something stressful? Did rest feel available today, or did it feel like something I had to justify? How am I really feeling? The patterns surface quickly — and what appears is usually more informative than any app or tracker.
Where self-awareness stops being enough
Emotional suppression has limits as a self-directed problem to solve, especially where trauma or significant mental health history is involved. If your baseline is genuinely hard to live with, a trauma-informed therapist or your GP is the right next step. As Suzy is careful to note, some of this work needs to be done in the presence of another person, in a safe container, rather than alone.
The conversation she and I had about shame, self-abandonment and what it actually means to come home to yourself is one of the most honest I've had on The Health Review. It's available now wherever you listen to podcasts.
This feature is for educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Always consult your own doctor before making changes to your health.
Self-Compassion Expert on Why Coming Home to Yourself is The Key to Happiness
When did you last feel totally safe in your body? When did you last connect with yourself on a deep level? For most of us, those questions sound almost foreign — and that, according to today's guest, is precisely the problem.
In this episode of The Health Review I sit down with Suzy Reading — chartered psychologist, yoga teacher, coach and author of ten books, including her latest How to Be Selfish. Suzy has spent two decades at the intersection of neuroscience, somatic therapy and psychology, and her work keeps coming back to one simple idea: that caring for yourself isn't selfish. It's the foundation of everything else.
This is one of the most warm, honest and moving conversations I've had on the show — and one that I think will stay with you.
Suzy shares her own deeply personal story of reaching what she calls energetic bankruptcy — becoming a new mother at the same time as losing her father to motor neuron disease, and what happened when she gave everything to everyone else and had nothing left.
What she found her way back to became the heart of this book.
Thanks for reading!
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