What Deserves Your Attention?

You don't need more health information. You need to know what to do with it.

A few days ago I read through dozens of responses from women. They’d all answered one simple question about their health.

Their answers couldn’t have been more different.

One woman wanted to know whether the thirty minutes she gets to herself each evening should be spent cooking, exercising, or just sitting down. Another asked where to begin with strength training. Someone else wondered what actually changes after menopause, and what she could finally stop worrying about. One admitted she keeps signing up for courses because she genuinely wants to look after herself, then by the end of the week she’s lost the workbook.

Then there was the woman who asked how to make peace with ageing in a culture that seems determined to convince women they should fear it.

On the surface, these are completely different questions.

Read them together and they’re all asking the same thing.

What deserves my attention?

None of these women were asking for more information. That’s what struck me most.

Not one wrote to say she wished there were another podcast to listen to, another book to read, another expert to follow.

They were asking something far more practical.

How do I know what deserves my attention?

Women aren’t struggling because they lack motivation. And it isn’t because they don’t care about their health. If anything, the opposite is true.

Women have never invested more time trying to understand their bodies. Some immerse themselves in books and podcasts. Others follow health professionals online. Plenty stay off social media altogether and still end up surrounded by advice. Newspaper articles, conversations with friends, television, family, well-meaning experts.

Wherever it comes from, it keeps arriving.

Strength train. Eat more protein. Improve your gut health. Reduce stress. Support your brain. Protect your bones. Prepare for menopause. Reduce inflammation.

Most of it isn’t wrong. Most of it is sensible, evidence-informed advice. The problem is it almost always arrives in isolation. Every recommendation lands as if it’s the missing piece that changes everything for you.

Real life doesn’t work like that.

Real life is a woman with thirty minutes to herself after the kids are in bed, deciding whether to cook for the week, go for a walk, lift some weights, or just sit down and breathe. It’s a woman whose brain already feels full, wondering whether another app or another course will finally make things better. It’s a woman trying to make peace with ageing in a culture that keeps telling her to fight it.

The challenge isn’t knowing these things are good for you. It’s working out what matters most, for you, right now. After almost twenty years in clinical practice, I’m convinced the most valuable thing I can offer a woman isn’t another protocol.

It’s clarity and perspective.

Sometimes the greatest relief comes from hearing someone say, this is why you feel this way. This is what to focus on now. You don’t need to worry about that yet.

Health gets simpler when someone helps you separate what’s important from what’s merely urgent. What can wait from what deserves your attention today.

That belief is the foundation for everything I do now.

I didn’t set out to write another health book. We already live in a world overflowing with health information. I wrote it because I’ve spent so long in the complex and chronic illness space, and I kept watching women reach the point where they didn’t need more advice. They needed someone to help them step back, see the whole picture, and understand what deserved their attention first.

Because underneath all the questions about hormones, gut health, strength, supplements and sleep, there’s usually one question.

Where do I start?

If that’s the question you keep circling back to, it’s exactly what my Health Strategy Sessions are for. One conversation to stop trying to do everything at once and leave with a clear, personalised sense of what deserves your attention now, what can wait, and what the next right step looks like.

The Health Edit: Where to start and what to change for women over 40 is out this September.