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Welcome to Weekly.health’s 28th issue. Every week, we explore cutting-edge research, actionable advice, and science-backed nutrition insights to help you live longer and healthier.

Our aim is to help you live another 10 healthy years and cut your risk of age-related disease.

🗒️ In This Issue:

• 📚 A brief note

• 📚 Books We’re Reading Right Now

• 📈 Research Digest: What’s new in nutrition science

• 🔥 Calculate your BMR (try our free tool)

• 🥩 How much protein do you need? Calculate it in just a few steps.

• 🛍️ Recommendations

• 📘 Glossary of Terms: Definitions for technical terms in this issue

📚 A brief note

Weekly.health has been around for more than 6 months, and we wanted to share a quick, honest update.

From the outside, it’s reasonable to assume that a newsletter like this — with affiliate links, book recommendations, and now educational tools and courses — comfortably pays for itself.

In reality, it doesn’t. In practice, each issue currently generates only a small amount of revenue - often around £5, and sometimes less - yet costs significantly more to produce.

Each issue takes several hours of research, reading, and synthesis, and while revenue has slowly increased, Weekly.health still runs at a net loss per issue once platform costs and research tools are accounted for. We’ve worked hard to streamline production and keep costs sensible, but growth itself increases those costs faster than it increases revenue.

The newsletter isn’t going away, and we’re committed to keeping it independent, evidence-based, and accessible, but our goal during 2026 is to make it sustainable to run. If you find value in the work and would like to help make it sustainable, one simple way to do so is via Buy Me A Coffee. Even a single coffee genuinely makes a difference.

There’s absolutely no expectation — your time and attention already mean a great deal. We’re grateful you’re here.

You can still support us by selecting from our recommended books and products below.

📚 Books We’re Reading Right Now

📈 Research Digest: What’s New in Nutrition Science

Here’s the best of recent nutrition research:

🥣 Greek yoghurt may support bones when paired with movement
In adults aged 55+, eating two 175 g servings of 0% Greek yoghurt daily for 8 weeks meaningfully increased protein and calcium intake—key nutrients many older adults underconsume. While bone markers didn’t improve short term, results hint yoghurt may influence bone turnover alongside exercise and inflammation without harm. Practical takeaway: use Greek yoghurt as an easy protein-calcium boost, especially if you’re active, but don’t expect rapid bone changes. (source)

🍳 Eggs could be a simple sleep and nutrition win during perimenopause
This narrative review suggests eggs may help support sleep, appetite, and muscle health in perimenopausal women thanks to their mix of high-quality protein, choline, tryptophan, vitamin D, and antioxidants. Two eggs provide ~12 g protein and ~200 IU vitamin D. Evidence is promising but indirect, so eggs aren’t a cure. But they’re a practical, affordable way to bolster evening nutrition while we await better trials. (source)

🧠 Protect your brain if you live with type 2 diabetes
In 564 adults aged 60+, researchers identified three cognitive risk groups, with nearly 67% already impaired or at risk. Poor blood sugar control (HbA1c ≥7%), malnutrition, longer diabetes duration, and low mental stimulation sharply increased risk. Malnutrition raised odds over 30-fold. The takeaway: prioritise stable glucose control, adequate nutrition, and regular mentally engaging activities to help slow cognitive decline alongside diabetes care. (source)

🥗 Protein source matters for heart health in later life
In a 16-week trial of Singaporean older adults, adding 20 g/day of protein to a healthy diet helped protect heart health, but soy protein stood out. While the control group’s triglycerides and CVD risk rose, both protein groups maintained healthy lipid profiles, and the soy group lowered total cholesterol. Takeaway: if boosting protein, plant-based options like soy may offer extra cardiovascular benefits. (source)

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🔥 Calculate your BMR (try our free tool)

Do you know how many calories your body needs just to exist?

Your basal metabolic rate (BMR) is the number of calories your body burns each day at complete rest — breathing, circulating blood, maintaining organs, repairing cells. No steps. No workouts. Just staying alive.

Why does this matter?

Because BMR is the foundation of almost every nutrition decision:

• Trying to lose fat without under-fueling

• Eating enough to support muscle, hormones, and recovery

• Avoiding “mystery plateaus” where weight or energy stalls

• Understanding why two people of the same size can need very different intakes

If you don’t know your BMR, you’re guessing, often by hundreds of calories per day.

I’ve just calculated mine using our BMR calculator over at The Healthspan Academy BMR calculator (screenshot above). It takes less than a minute and gives you a personalised baseline you can actually use, whether your goal is fat loss, muscle, or long-term health and longevity.

Once you know your number, everything else - protein targets, calorie ranges, even meal planning - becomes clearer and far easier to get right.

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🥩 How much protein do you need? Calculate it in just a few steps.

Protein isn’t only “a gym thing”.

Yes, higher protein can support muscle growth, but the bigger healthspan story is simpler: adequate protein helps you maintain strength and lean mass as you age, which is tightly linked to independence, resilience, and a lower risk of frailty.

The problem is, supermarkets are packed with “high-protein” yoghurts, bars, and ready meals, often eaten because they feel healthy, without anyone knowing whether they’re actually helping… or just adding expensive calories.

The baseline (and why it may be too low for healthspan)

In the UK, the Reference Nutrient Intake (RNI) for adults is 0.75 g/kg/day.
In the US, the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for adults is 0.8 g/kg/day (about 0.36 g/lb/day).

These are best thought of as baseline requirements. These levels are intended to meet the needs of nearly all healthy people, not necessarily the intake that optimises outcomes like strength, body composition, and long-term functional health.

With this newsletter, we want to equip you with the knowledge to optimise your nutrition as much as you want.

Why protein matters for you

• Maintaining lean mass and strength
  Muscle isn’t just “bulk”. It’s functional capacity, and preserving it is one of the most practical, evidence-backed ways to support healthspan (especially as anabolic responsiveness declines with age). Try to think less about building muscle, and think more about healthy lean mass.

• Better outcomes during weight loss
  If you diet, you don’t only lose fat, but lean mass, too. Losing lean mass reduces your basal metabolic rate (BMR), making losing fat even more difficult. Higher protein intakes help reduce that, especially alongside resistance training.

• More satisfying meals (often less mindless snacking)
  Protein tends to be more satiating than carbs or fat, which can make weight management feel less like willpower.

• A simple “meal quality” upgrade
  When you anchor meals around lean protein sources eggs, yoghurt, fish, chicken, tofu/tempeh, beans + dairy, the rest of the plate usually gets better by default: more fibre-rich plants, fewer ultra-processed “empty” calories.

• Ageing, frailty, and “useful strength”
  Protein isn’t just about looking lean, but about staying able. Adequate protein, alongside some form of strength work, helps support lean mass and function, which are both strongly tied to frailty risk and long-term independence.

Why we built the Protein Calculator

Most people don’t struggle with inadequate protein intakes because they don’t care. They struggle because they’re guessing.

Our Protein Intake Calculator uses your weight, height, age, training level, and goal to give you:

• a personalised daily protein target

• calories from protein

• a practical per-meal target (split across 3 meals)

• simple food examples so the number means something in real life

Use it in 30 seconds

1. Enter your details

2. Choose your goal (fat loss, maintenance, muscle gain)

3. Get your daily target + per-meal target

➡️ Try it now: go to Tools → Protein Calculator in The Healthspan Academy and calculate your target in under a minute.

🛍️ Recommendations

Discover the products, services, and retailers we’ve mentioned in past Weekly Health issues, all in one place so you can explore at your own pace.

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🙏 Thanks for Reading!

That’s the end of this issue of Weekly.health.

This newsletter is written by a small, independent team, led by James — who’s been following nutrition science for nearly 20 years and is now working towards a formal, industry-recognised qualification.

We’re based in England, so if you’re over the pond, you might notice a few strange spellings.

Our goal is to make cutting-edge, evidence-based nutrition advice simple, useful, and genuinely applicable to everyday life.

We don’t want to bombard you with adverts, but a few of the links in this email may reward us when you click and make a purchase. This goes towards helping us to continue bringing you this newsletter.

We’ll keep improving with every issue. If you’ve got any feedback or suggestions, we’d love to hear them (just reply to this email).

See you next week!

📖 Glossary of Terms in This Issue (Alphabetical Order)

A–Z Glossary of Technical Terms

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