Most of us were taught that health means the absence of illness. A normal blood test must surely mean that we are well. But what if that picture is missing something crucial? What if the markers we rely on aren’t telling us the whole story and by the time they do, we’ve already been quietly moving in the wrong direction for years?

What Is Metabolic Health and Why Should You Care?

When most people hear the word metabolic, they think about how fast the body burns calories. But metabolic health is something far broader. It’s about how well your body regulates the processes that keep you alive and thriving – blood sugar, insulin sensitivity, cholesterol, blood pressure and the way food gets converted into energy.

Good metabolic health means these systems are humming along efficiently. Poor metabolic health, known as metabolic syndrome, is the silent driver behind an alarming range of conditions: hypertension, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, dementia, cancer and non alcoholic fatty liver disease, to name just a few. Here’s what makes it so tricky. You can have completely normal results on standard blood tests and still be heading towards metabolic syndrome.

Understanding insulin changes everything. When we eat carbohydrates, blood sugar rises and insulin is released to bring it back down. In a healthy system, this works beautifully. But flood the body with insulin day after day and eventually the cells stop responding to it properly. That’s insulin resistance.

Here’s the critical bit. As long as insulin is circulating in your body, you cannot burn fat. Full stop. Fat burning only happens when insulin drops and insulin only drops when we reduce carbohydrates, fast, or both.

There’s another consequence that doesn’t get nearly enough attention. Chronically high insulin activates growth pathways that essentially tell the body to keep growing. As we age, that’s the last thing we want. It’s part of the reason poor metabolic health is increasingly linked to earlier onset cancers. Chronic low grade inflammation, running silently in the background, creates exactly the conditions in which disease takes hold.

Fasting: A potential solution to the problem

One of the most exciting areas in metabolic health research is fasting. Not the extreme, punishing kind but a practical, personalised approach that can have genuinely transformative results. Intermittent fasting includes finishing eating by 7pm and not eating again until 7.30 or 8am to create a consistent 12 to 13 hour fasting window. This can be enough to stabilise blood sugar and stop weight gain but sometimes isn’t quite enough to drive meaningful weight loss.

Prolonged fasting, specifically the Fasting Mimicking Diet (FMD) developed by Professor Valter Longo is a progression to Intermittant Fasting. The beauty of this approach is that you eat every day, three small, low calorie meals across five days, but the precise balance of nutrients prevents the body from triggering its nutrient sensing pathways. In other words, the body is gently tricked into behaving as if it’s fasting, unlocking all the cellular benefits without the misery of eating nothing at all.

Combined with lower carbohydrate eating and regular exercise, it is possible to reverse metabolic syndrome using these fasting methods.

What’s Happening at a Cellular Level

Wellness coach Don Gordon, who’s been working with the Fasting Mimicking Diet in clinical practice for over four years, explains what happens inside the body during a fast. When it’s no longer overwhelmed with incoming food, something remarkable happens. Inflammation drops. Insulin falls. The body shifts from its default state of constant growth and glucose burning into a mode of repair and renewal, clearing away damaged cells in a process called autophagy.

Think of the body as a hybrid car. We’re designed to run on both glucose and ketones, the fuel produced when we fast. But most of us spend our entire lives burning glucose exclusively, never switching into fat burning mode at all. The Fasting Mimicking Diet teaches the body to make that switch and once it has learned, the process gets easier every time.

For women over 45 in particular, one standout feature of this approach is that it reduces visceral fat while preserving lean muscle. That matters enormously because muscle loss accelerates after menopause and is one of the key drivers of metabolic decline.

Food as Medicine

Alongside fasting, reducing carbohydrate intake was the final piece of the puzzle. As NCIM nutritional therapist Claire Cohen puts it, diet is the single most modifiable risk factor for improving metabolic health and longevity.

The insight is simple but powerful. Every time we eat a large plate of pasta or a stack of toast, we send blood sugar and therefore insulin soaring. Until insulin comes back down, the body is locked out of its fat stores entirely.

Low carbohydrate eating doesn’t mean deprivation. It means understanding which foods drive glucose spikes and finding genuinely delicious alternatives that keep blood sugar stable. Most people find it far more satisfying than they expected, especially when they understand the reasoning behind it.

The Human Side of Change

The most underestimated element of any health journey is the human one. Don Gordon’s experience as a health coach has taught him that the barriers to change are rarely about information. Most people already know what would help them. The barriers are emotional, motivational and habitual.

Negative self talk — “I could never fast” or “I just don’t have the willpower” — is one of the most common obstacles he encounters. What coaching provides isn’t more information. It’s the space, support and accountability to find your own way through. And community matters too and can make a profound difference to motivation.

Five Foundations of Metabolic Health

Dr Thompson’s framework for rebuilding metabolic resilience comes down to five things:

Mindfulness: managing stress, which directly affects cortisol, blood pressure and fasting glucose.

Exercise: non negotiable for insulin sensitivity, muscle preservation and energy.

Intermittent fasting: a sustainable daily practice that stabilises blood sugar and prevents weight gain.

Prolonged fasting: used two or three times a year to reset metabolic pathways and restore the body’s ability to burn ketones.

Low carbohydrate eating: reducing the foods that drive insulin spikes and keeping blood sugar steady between meals.

None of these work in isolation. Together they form a genuinely powerful approach to reversing the chronic silent inflammation that underpins so much of modern disease.

What This Means for You

Whether you’re postmenopausal and noticing changes you can’t quite explain, whether you’ve been told your bloods are “borderline but fine,” or whether you simply want to age as well as possible, metabolic health is worth understanding. The good news is that metabolic syndrome is largely reversible. Given the right conditions, the right food, movement, rest and support, the body will begin to find its way back to balance. It’s more intelligent and adaptable than we give it credit for.

At NCIM we’re launching a new suite of metabolic health programmes, including personalised fasting support through our clinical services and our Eat Better, Feel Better in-person cooking experience at Ham Green House near Bristol.

This isn’t about willpower or quick fixes. It’s about understanding your body and giving it what it was always designed to need.