SMART THINKER

Several years ago, doctor and science journalist Michael Mosley took his own health in hand, with impressive results. Now he’s coming to show us how to do the same.

Doctor and science journalist Michael Mosley took his own health in hand, with impressive results.

When Oxford University was looking for people to take part in trials for a COVID-19 vaccine earlier this year, Michael Mosley didn’t hesitate. In the past, in the name of science, he has swallowed tape worms, infected himself with malaria, deliberately gained weight to test diets, undergone sleep experiments (he suffers insomnia) and gone caving (he is claustrophobic). And so the English science journalist and broadcaster saw the chance to be part of the team to bring a vaccine to the world as an exciting opportunity.

Mosley was disappointed not to be selected by his alma mater as a human guinea pig. “They looked at me but eventually decided no,” he tells me, slightly dispirited. “I am 63 – maybe that was too old…who knows? It would have been fascinating to have been involved,” he says wistfully.

Since then, the Pfizer/ BioNTech vaccine has been approved for use in the UK and is being rolled out. Will he be lining up to get it?

“Absolutely! But they won’t give it to me first as I am not in an at-risk group.”

Mosley qualified as a doctor back in the 1980s and although he left medicine after just a few years to take up a job in television at the BBC, he retains his lifelong fascination with the human body and science, and published a book earlier this year, Covid-19: What you need to know about the Coronavirus and the race for the vaccine.

He even had some personal experience with the virus, with two of his three adult sons contracting the disease at the same time – one while working in Melbourne, and the other while working as a doctor in the UK. Mosley and his wife, GP Clare Bailey, looked after their sons at home throughout their illness. “I was never worried about them,” he says. “They’re young and fit. In fact, I was relieved Jack got it and was at home to self-isolate as he was about to start working on a COVID ward in Manchester and now, having had it, he will have immunity. I thought Clare and I might get it but again, I was not overly concerned – the only things to put me at risk were my age and being a bloke.”

Indeed, since being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in 2013, Mosley has become famous for researching and writing about improving one’s health by following the Mediterranean diet, losing weight (1.9 billion adults worldwide are overweight/ obese), getting sufficient sleep, and fasting intermittently. While practising what he preached, Mosley succeeded in reversing his own condition and no longer has diabetes.

Bailey, a passionate foodie, became her husband’s part-time partner-in-crime, contributing her own medical knowledge and developing recipes to accompany Mosley’s writings. In the past 10 years, he has published a slew of books, including the phenomenally successful The Fast Diet, which he later updated and combined with The 8-Week Blood Sugar Diet to become The Fast 800. He will be heading Down Under in 2021 with his new live show, ‘Your Body: An Evening of Discovery’.

“It’s a celebration of the human body – how do you know if it is not in shape and what do you do if it isn’t? I’ll be talking about rapid weight loss, sleep, and intermittent fasting; also celebrating the immune system and what it does; and how to knock it into shape so the vaccine will work when it comes along,” he says with his trademark enthusiasm. “Many of us don’t realise how important sleep is. There was a study done when people with a bad night’s sleep (less than 6-7 hours), who were injected with Hepatitis B vaccine, were found to be 16 times less likely to develop antibodies than those who got sufficient sleep!” he exclaims.

As someone who regularly gets less than my allotted eight hours, I am considering this impressive statistic, fearful of what poor sleeping habits may be doing to my health. But there is no time to ponder – Mosley is off again.

“Did you know we have a second brain in our gut? It is a network of over 100 million neurons that communicate with the brain in our skull – that’s as many neurons as there are in the head of a cat!” No doubt, his live show will be replete with such fun facts.

For Mosley, a trip Down Under also represents the chance to catch up with old friends and relatives. His father’s sister married an Aussie and so he has cousins scattered up and down the country; as well, many of his old university friends immigrated to Perth, where they work in the medical field.

“I’ve certainly visited a lot of the major sites in Australia,” he says. “My Australian uncle set up a museum in Perth and I remember driving with him up to the Northern Territory. On the way, we’d stop and pick up any dead kangaroos so he could use their skulls in the museum.”

‘Your Body: An Evening of Discovery,’ Australia-wide. 29 April-12 May, 2021.

“TWO OF HIS THREE SONS CONTRACTED COVID-19 AT THE SAME TIME.”