08 January 2024 , 19:00
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Dr Michael Mosley has become somewhat of a king in the health world thanks to his advice on nutrition and exercise.
The 66-year-old is best known for his work promoting intermittent fasting and the low-carb ketogenic diet, having written popular books and created a new health plan called The Fast 800. He has produced several BBC programmes on diet and tonight, he stars in a new Channel 4 documentary series uncovering the truth behind the nation's health by looking into what goes into our shopping trolleys.
In the first episode, he overhauls a couple's diet after the husband, a lorry driver, battled to control his blood pressure while the wife, an NHS worker, struggled with fatigue. But what do we know about the doctor's home life away from the cameras? We take a look at his own health diagnoses and his rarely-seen GP wife.
Michael with wife Clare, who is a GP (Ken McKay/ITV/REX/Shutterstock)
The couple, who met at medical school, have four children (Ken McKay/ITV/REX/Shutterstock)Michael was born in India but moved to England as a youngster and attended boarding school from the age of seven. He went on to study Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford and started on a very different path as a banker in London.
After two years, he moved to medicine but had intended to become a psychiatrist, studying at UCL Medical School. It was here that he met his wife, Clare Bailey. While rarely in the limelight compared to her husband, Dr Bailey is a columnist and has helped create their recent programme and app, The Fast 800.
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Mosley soon realised psychology wasn't for him, and joined a trainee assistant producer scheme at the BBC in 1985. His career has since gone from strength to strength, with the doctor producing a string of science programmes, from The Human Face to 10 Things You Need to Know about Losing Weight.
However his three-part series for Channel 4 in 2021, Lose a Stone in 21 Days, was met with criticism from UK eating disorder charity Beat, which stated that "the programme caused enough stress and anxiety to our beneficiaries that we extended our Helpline hours to support anyone affected and received 51 per cent more contact during that time."
In 2011, Dr Mosley combined his background in psychology with his love of documentary-making in a series called The Brain: A Secret History, which uncovered the history of neuroscience. Notably, the programme looked at methods used to identify anomalies in brain structure associated with psychopathy, and his personal test results showed that he, in fact, had some of these characteristics.
"I'm reasonably confident I'm not a psychopath," Mosley told The Guardian. "But I knew it was a risk. There's always an element of risk that [the tests] tell you something you don't want to know."
Meanwhile, the doctor, who regularly appears on This Morning, revealed he is not immune to health conditions as he was previously diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. At a time when Mosley was overweight, he had early signs of fatty liver disease.
But once he radicalised his diet, he managed to reverse it, along with his type 2 diabetes. Speaking with the Mirror, he said: "Eleven years ago, when I discovered that I had type 2 diabetes, I also had a scan that revealed I had early signs of fatty liver disease. Both the diabetes and the fatty liver went away once I went on the 5:2 diet and lost 9kg."
It was when the diet guru met with Professor Mark Mattson, professor of neurosciences at Johns Hopkins University who has written more than 300 papers on intermittent fasting, he learned about the positive impacts of what became known as the 5:2 diet - where you eat normally for five days a week and cut your calories to around 800 for the other two days.
He said that he was told that if he was to reverse his diabetes, he would have to lose 5g of fat from the pancreas, but to do that, he needed to lose 10 per cent of his body weight, which he achieved. Meanwhile, in one of his documentaries about sleep, he also admitted he had chronic insomnia.
The award-winning broadcaster shares four children with his wife Clare, and lives in Buckinghamshire. Last year he announced that the couple are starting their first-ever joint tour in February, with him adding: "We're sharing the latest health science, clips from a new secret food series and Clare will be doing on-stage cooking!"
Michael Mosley: Secrets of Your Big Shop airs tonight on Channel 4 at 8pm
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