If you're in your 40s and the effort you're putting in stopped matching the results you're getting, this episode is probably the most useful thing you'll listen to this week.

In 2024, Stanford University published a study in Nature Aging that tracked over 135,000 molecules inside human bodies across people aged 25 to 75. What they found challenges the most basic assumption behind almost all midlife health advice — that the body ages gradually, and that the same solutions keep working if you just apply them consistently enough.

They don't. And there's a biological reason why.

Liton walks through what the Stanford research actually found, what changes in your body and brain around 44 and around 60, why those changes mean single-variable advice stops working, and what to do instead.

Study referenced: Shen et al. (2024), 'Nonlinear dynamics of multi-omics profiles during human aging', Nature Aging. nature.com/articles/s43587-024-00692-2

Only 2% of women feel well-informed about perimenopause before the symptoms arrive. So it's no surprise that the men around them are completely lost.

Joe Warner is a health journalist, bestselling author, and former editorial director of Men's Fitness.

His new book, Burning Up, Frozen Out, is the first practical guide to perimenopause written specifically for men, covering the science, the communication tools, and what's actually at stake.

62% of UK divorces are instigated by women in their 40s, 50s and 60s. 73% of women say menopause played a factor. Joe argues this isn't a relationship crisis but a communication one.

We talk about why men default to fixing things that can't be fixed, why anger is a symptom not a problem, what "helped, heard or hugged" means in practice, and what the couples who come out the other side stronger all have in common.

If the man in your life needs to hear this, send him the episode!

SHOW NOTES

Joe Warner is a health and fitness journalist, bestselling author and co-founder of NewBodyPlan.com. He spent over a decade as Editorial Director of Men's Fitness magazine and has written about health and wellbeing for more than 20 years.

His new book, Burning Up, Frozen Out: What Every Man Needs to Know About the Menopause (But No One Told You), is written specifically for male partners navigating perimenopause — covering the biology, the communication, and the practical tools that actually help.

Buy the book

UK and US: burningupfrozenout.com or all major bookshops

Free resources (including a downloadable chapter on men and the midlife crisis): burningupfrozenout.com

Find Joe:

Instagram: @joewarneruk

Substack: hotflushcoldshoulder.substack.com

Things we cover

Why only 2% of women feel prepared for perimenopause before it hits and what that means for the people around them

The two modes men default to: head in the sand, or trying to fix something that can't be fixed

The "helped, heard or hugged" question and why just asking it changes everything

Why perimenopause is an existential crisis, not just a physical one

The stat that stopped me: 1 in 4 women experience thoughts of self-harm during perimenopause

What a police hostage negotiator taught Joe about listening

Why women are more likely to be offered HRT when a partner comes to the GP appointment

Sex, intimacy, and why men and women are wired completely differently on reconnection

The laundry advice (you'll see)Why 62% of UK divorces are instigated by women in their 40s, 50s and 60s and what's actually behind that number

I started this podcast because something went wrong at midlife and I couldn't figure it out. I remember the crushing feeling of being sure I wouldn't make it to 45.

Just a slow accumulation of weight, debilitating migraines, brain fog so bad I couldn't do my job, and a nagging certainty that something was seriously wrong. I was appearing in more photos with my twins not because I'd turned into a sentimental dad, but because I genuinely wasn't sure I'd be around to feature in them later.

This is that story. How the pandemic wrecked my habits, how standard health advice made things worse, and how a phone call from a friend introduced me to a piece of diabetic technology that changed the way I understood my own body and eventually led me to build Nico, a metabolic health platform used by hundreds of people in midlife.

I'm not a doctor. I'm someone who spent years immersed in the real data of what happens when people in their 40s and 50s finally get the right information. And I want to share what I've learned.

If you're in midlife and you're doing everything right but still feel like your body is working against you; this is for you.

World Obesity Day was created to position obesity as a chronic disease that needs you to spend money on drugs.The organisations behind it have been funded by pharmaceutical companies for thirty years. And the American Medical Association classified obesity as a chronic disease in 2013; overruling their own science council who said there wasn't enough evidence.In this pilor episode, Liton Ali follows the money, from the IOTF's founding in 1995, through the pharma funding trail documented by the British Medical Journal, to Novo Nordisk's founding partnership in the lobbying network shaping obesity treatment policy today.