Prediabetes means your blood sugar is higher than normal, but not yet in the diabetes range. In New Zealand, that's an HbA1c of 42–47 mmol/mol, under thresholds introduced on 1 July 2026. It's common, and it's a real opportunity: lifestyle change can cut the risk of developing type 2 diabetes by more than half, and many people return to normal blood sugar.

Often, yes. Fatty liver (now called MASLD) frequently improves substantially with lifestyle change. Losing around 5% of your body weight reduces liver fat. Losing 7–10% can settle liver inflammation, and in some people who lose 10% or more, liver scarring regresses. Regular exercise reduces liver fat even without weight loss.

For most people, cholesterol can be meaningfully improved. Triglycerides often fall by 20–50% with lifestyle change, and LDL cholesterol by around 13–17% with the right eating pattern. Two further tests, ApoB and Lp(a), show your real risk more precisely, so your plan can be built around you rather than a single number.

Lifestyle changes can lower blood pressure by about as much as a single medication. The biggest effects come from a low-salt, DASH-style eating pattern, regular exercise (especially held exercises like wall sits), weight loss, and cutting back on heavy drinking. The effects add up, and they work alongside any treatment you're already on.

Yes, for some people. Type 2 diabetes remission means your average blood sugar (HbA1c) stays below 48 mmol/mol for at least three months, without glucose-lowering medication. It's most likely with substantial weight loss, early after diagnosis. And even without full remission, lowering your blood sugar brings real, measurable benefits.

Sleep apnoea is a breathing disorder where the airway repeatedly narrows and/or collapses fully during sleep, disrupting normal sleep architecture and preventing the body from achieving the restorative sleep it needs to rest and repair. The most recognisable symptoms are loud, habitual snoring, pauses in breathing noticed by a partner, and gasping or choking during sleep.

Which blood tests are useful when weight will not shift — insulin, thyroid, sex hormones, cortisol rhythm — and what each one actually tells you.

Doing everything right and the weight won’t move? The metabolic and hormonal causes behind stalled weight loss — and which ones you can measure.

Perimenopause commonly disrupts sleep: fluctuating oestrogen and progesterone affect temperature, mood and the body’s sleep-wake rhythms, and hot flushes and night sweats fragment the night. But poor sleep isn’t an inevitable part of midlife. What keeps it going is often modifiable, and other drivers, including sleep apnoea, are frequently missed. Understanding which apply to you is the first step.

If you are exhausted but still cannot sleep, the problem is rarely your bedtime routine. Chronic insomnia is usually kept going by two things sleep hygiene never touches: a nervous system that has learned to stay alert in bed, and the sleep systems that are built during your day, not at night. That is also where the fix lives.

If you are exhausted but still cannot sleep, the problem is rarely your bedtime routine. Chronic insomnia is usually kept going by two things sleep hygiene never touches: a nervous system that has learned to stay alert in bed, and the sleep systems that are built during your day, not at night. That is also where the fix lives.

A clinical look at the peptides everyone's talking about — where things stand now, as heard on the Dom Harvey Podcast.

Why the check that confirms nothing has failed is not the same as the one that finds what’s wearing out too quickly.

Dr Ula Heywood and fitness practitioner Rebecca Goldwater look at the emerging evidence linking exercise with cancer risk, and the biology working underneath it.

You've been told it's stress, or age, or that you're doing too much, or not enough. None of it has quite explained what you're actually experiencing.

You’ve had the bloods done. You hear the words you were hoping to hear — everything looks normal. And on the way home you tried to feel reassured, because that’s what the result is supposed to do.

Most people take a supplement because someone told them they should. Fewer can tell you what it's doing.

Dr Ula: Why I prescribe recovery

Sauna: The cardiovascular session that doesn’t require exercise

The Fire You Can’t Feel: Why Chronic Inflammation Is the Signal Most People Never Get Tested For