Christmas presents are open, mince pies are eaten, now is the time when we start making goals for the coming year, including those for our health. Here are my predictions for health and wellbeing trends in year 2025.
Health trend N 1: Weight loss strategies
Weight loss injectables will gain more popularity. At present, here in the UK most medical settings offer Wegowy and Mounjaro for people who fit the qualifying criteria or have been referred by a weight management service. Next year these injectables are looking to become more mainstream and easier to purchase online. Several providers I checked recently offer same day dispatch, sidestepping a thorough assessment of qualifying criteria.
In the UK at the moment of writing, to qualify for either Wegowy or Mounjaro jabs you need to have: either a body mass index (BMI) of 30 and at least one weight-related health issue; or have a BMI of 30-35 and be referred by a specialist weight management service; or have a BMI of 27 and have either diabetes 2, high blood pressure or obstructive sleep apnea. People from Black African, African-Caribbean, Asian, South Asian, Chinese, and Middle Eastern backgrounds may be able to qualify for Wegovy at a lower BMI and without an accompanying condition.
How do Wegowy and Mounjaro tackle weight loss?
Wegowy’s active component is semaglutide, which works to suppress one’s appetite by mimicking the glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) - a type of hormone produced in the gut that is responsible for controlling appetite. Semaglutide is also reported to slow down gastric emptying - the rate at which food leaves the stomach, potentially making people feel fuller for longer periods of time.
Mounjaro - is a more recent weight loss injectable, which the NHS plans to roll out in England starting from early 2025.
Mounjaro works on another class of metabolic hormones - glucose-dependent insulinotropic popypeptide (GIP), which is a hormone produced in the upper gut and secreted after eating. It regulates energy balance through cell surface receptor signalling in the brain and body fat tissue.
What about diets to become popular in 2025?
2024 saw a magnitude of diets basically supporting the same overall health theme - Mediterranean diet is the winner for preventing many modern day diseases and helping maintain vital health long into old age. The wide range of diets we saw in 2024 looked like different spin-offs from the Mediterranean diet.
According to the channel US News, the most popular diets in 2024 were the Mediterranean diet, DASH, MIND, Flexitarian, the Volumetrics, TLC diet, Pritikin and vegan diets. In the UK, people’s choices for diets in 2024 were pretty similar with the inclusion of NOOM, and the Blue Zones diet.
Apart from veganism, which avoids all animal source foods, every other diet takes a new approach to differentiate itself from the basics of the Mediterranean or antiinflammatory diet, sharing the same characteristics for long-term health: eating vegetables and fruits in abundance, including plenty of pulses, legumes and beans, increasing fish and healthy fats, preferably from plant sources, and decreasing meat consumption. I wrote on the longterm health benefits of the Mediterranean diet in my blog post “Stave off disease with the Mediterranean diet”.
Health trend N 2 - liver detox and liver health supplements
Following a festive period of indulgence in party foods, alcoholic beverages, sweets, chocolate and puddings, many people feel their liver is ought to have a detox in January.
In addition, as more people in the UK are diagnosed with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease or NAFLD (NAFLD saw a rebranding in 2023 into MASLD - the metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease), concern for one’s liver health is going to become heightened in 2025.
Many health supplement brands are offering liver health support supps, ranging from a combination of vitamins and minerals, such as vitamin A, E, group B vitamins to powdered broccoli, garlic, milk thistle and a mini treasure box of bottles and jars, all aimed at your improved liver health.
Word of caution here: our liver is the most worked organ in the body. It performs more than 500 functions on a daily basis, the main one being detoxifying the body. To say that your liver needs a detox in January is par to saying that you need to get extra air to breathe today, an increased amount of it to what you needed yesterday - poppycock! Every day the liver breaks down toxins you ingest with the foods and drinks and also those produced by bacterial metabolism. The liver so-call ‘humanises’ nutrients so that your cells can use them. The most astonishing thing about the liver, it can suffer up to 70% damage and not show diagnosable liver disease. Your liver regenerates itself after being damaged.
The liver has two detoxification phases, Phase I and Phase II. Both phases require a range of vitamins and minerals, such as vitamin A, vitamin B3, vitamin B9 or folic acid, copper, zinc, selenium, glutathione, ascorbic acid or vitamin C, flavonoids and many other in order to make the Detox Phase I and II happen successfully. Your best support for the liver should come from eating a big variety of vegetables and fruit, all rich in those vitamins and minerals. Hence, abscond fancy-sounding liver detox programmes and aim to eat the rainbow - red, orange, yellow, blue, purple and most of all green vegetables in order to supply the liver with the supportive nutrients it needs.
If you suspect your liver may be overworked, check out for symptoms of liver problems in my blog post.
Health trend N3 - alcohol & health
Dry January is a longstanding tradition among many, I think year 2025 will see more and more people preferring to abstain from alcohol throughout the year.
If you need just an extra push to reduce your alcohol consumption come this January, you should know that a ‘mega’ paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, JAMA, in 2023, showed that drinking any amount of alcohol was associated with zero health benefits, and instead increased all-cause mortality in 724 health conditions. Zero benefits compared to 724 health risks.
In this meta-analysis of 107 studies that looked at alcohol consumption in more than 4.8 million people , there was a significantly increased risk of all-cause mortality among women who drank 25 or more grams of alcohol per day (equivalent to 1 large glass of wine) and among men who drank 45 or more grams (which equates to either one and a half pints of beer, or just over 2 large glasses of wine).
Alcohol-free beer, wine, gin, tequila and other spirits will gain more popularity in 2025, as their improved tastes will appeal to many as a healthy alternative to drink both at social events and at home.
I personally love the flavours in the SEEDLIP GROVE 42 - the blood orange and ginger are a delicious mix giving me the flavours of the Mediterranean region.
Health trend N 4 - personalised exercise
In the UK at the moment of writing, to qualify for either Wegowy or Mounjaro jabs you need to have: either a body mass index (BMI) of 30 and at least one weight-related health issue; or have a BMI of 30-35 and be referred by a specialist weight management service; or have a BMI of 27 and have either diabetes 2, high blood pressure or obstructive sleep apnea. People from Black African, African-Caribbean, Asian, South Asian, Chinese, and Middle Eastern backgrounds may be able to qualify for Wegovy at a lower BMI and without an accompanying condition.
How do Wegowy and Mounjaro tackle weight loss?
Wegowy’s active component is semaglutide, which works to suppress one’s appetite by mimicking the glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) - a type of hormone produced in the gut that is responsible for controlling appetite. Semaglutide is also reported to slow down gastric emptying - the rate at which food leaves the stomach, potentially making people feel fuller for longer periods of time.
Mounjaro - is a more recent weight loss injectable, which the NHS plans to roll out in England starting from early 2025.
Mounjaro works on another class of metabolic hormones - glucose-dependent insulinotropic popypeptide (GIP), which is a hormone produced in the upper gut and secreted after eating. It regulates energy balance through cell surface receptor signalling in the brain and body fat tissue.
What about diets to become popular in 2025?
2024 saw a magnitude of diets basically supporting the same overall health theme - Mediterranean diet is the winner for preventing many modern day diseases and helping maintain vital health long into old age. The wide range of diets we saw in 2024 looked like different spin-offs from the Mediterranean diet.
According to the channel US News, the most popular diets in 2024 were the Mediterranean diet, DASH, MIND, Flexitarian, the Volumetrics, TLC diet, Pritikin and vegan diets. In the UK, people’s choices for diets in 2024 were pretty similar with the inclusion of NOOM, and the Blue Zones diet.
Apart from veganism, which avoids all animal source foods, every other diet takes a new approach to differentiate itself from the basics of the Mediterranean or antiinflammatory diet, sharing the same characteristics for long-term health: eating vegetables and fruits in abundance, including plenty of pulses, legumes and beans, increasing fish and healthy fats, preferably from plant sources, and decreasing meat consumption. I wrote on the longterm health benefits of the Mediterranean diet in my blog post “Stave off disease with the Mediterranean diet”.
Health trend N 2 - liver detox and liver health supplements
Following a festive period of indulgence in party foods, alcoholic beverages, sweets, chocolate and puddings, many people feel their liver is ought to have a detox in January.
In addition, as more people in the UK are diagnosed with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease or NAFLD (NAFLD saw a rebranding in 2023 into MASLD - the metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease), concern for one’s liver health is going to become heightened in 2025.
Many health supplement brands are offering liver health support supps, ranging from a combination of vitamins and minerals, such as vitamin A, E, group B vitamins to powdered broccoli, garlic, milk thistle and a mini treasure box of bottles and jars, all aimed at your improved liver health.
Word of caution here: our liver is the most worked organ in the body. It performs more than 500 functions on a daily basis, the main one being detoxifying the body. To say that your liver needs a detox in January is par to saying that you need to get extra air to breathe today, an increased amount of it to what you needed yesterday - poppycock! Every day the liver breaks down toxins you ingest with the foods and drinks and also those produced by bacterial metabolism. The liver so-call ‘humanises’ nutrients so that your cells can use them. The most astonishing thing about the liver, it can suffer up to 70% damage and not show diagnosable liver disease. Your liver regenerates itself after being damaged.
The liver has two detoxification phases, Phase I and Phase II. Both phases require a range of vitamins and minerals, such as vitamin A, vitamin B3, vitamin B9 or folic acid, copper, zinc, selenium, glutathione, ascorbic acid or vitamin C, flavonoids and many other in order to make the Detox Phase I and II happen successfully. Your best support for the liver should come from eating a big variety of vegetables and fruit, all rich in those vitamins and minerals. Hence, abscond fancy-sounding liver detox programmes and aim to eat the rainbow - red, orange, yellow, blue, purple and most of all green vegetables in order to supply the liver with the supportive nutrients it needs.
If you suspect your liver may be overworked, check out for symptoms of liver problems in my blog post.
Health trend N3 - alcohol & health
Dry January is a longstanding tradition among many, I think year 2025 will see more and more people preferring to abstain from alcohol throughout the year.
If you need just an extra push to reduce your alcohol consumption come this January, you should know that a ‘mega’ paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, JAMA, in 2023, showed that drinking any amount of alcohol was associated with zero health benefits, and instead increased all-cause mortality in 724 health conditions. Zero benefits compared to 724 health risks.
In this meta-analysis of 107 studies that looked at alcohol consumption in more than 4.8 million people , there was a significantly increased risk of all-cause mortality among women who drank 25 or more grams of alcohol per day (equivalent to 1 large glass of wine) and among men who drank 45 or more grams (which equates to either one and a half pints of beer, or just over 2 large glasses of wine).
Alcohol-free beer, wine, gin, tequila and other spirits will gain more popularity in 2025, as their improved tastes will appeal to many as a healthy alternative to drink both at social events and at home.
I personally love the flavours in the SEEDLIP GROVE 42 - the blood orange and ginger are a delicious mix giving me the flavours of the Mediterranean region.
Health trend N 4 - personalised exercise
Exercise snacking, VILPAs, strength training and functional fitness, music-themed group classes and hybrid fitness will be among most popular exercise trends in year 2025.
Exercise ‘snacking’
According to the Good Men Project, 'exercise snacking' hit over 86,000 online searches in 2024, and it is one trend predicted to stay for long. The principles of exercise snacking are based on making exercise to be an affordable and achievable option for all - instead of aiming to do one 40 to 60 minutes’ workout per day, you do short bursts of exercise (between 1 to 10 minutes each) several times during the day. The affordability of this exercise approach is that one can do these types of activities at home, in the office, while on business trips, etc. Body weight squats, sit-ups, running up the stairs - anything contributes to your daily exercise snacking.
VILPAs
Vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity - VILPAs got themselves a big name after studies published in 2022 showed that people who had 3 bouts of VILPAs per day had 38% to 40% reduction in all-cause mortality risk and a 48% to 49% reduction in cardiovascular disease mortality. What makes VILPAs attractive to both exercisers and non-exercisers is that they are lifestyle type activity, all performed under 3 minutes, typically 30-60 seconds each. Running to catch a bus, sprinting up the stairs to the office door, speeding up in your walk, picking up and carrying weight - all examples of VILPAs.
My personal favourite? Jumping out of my chair to do a few star jumps in between seeing patients in my NHS clinic. I also love doing 5 to 6 clapping push-ups off my desk. They have to be fast and they have to be short.
Strength training, functional training and personalised fitness
In the past few years there has been so much research on the benefits of strength training for longevity and reduction of all-cause mortality, that strength training is now on everyone’s radar, young and old. And it is here to stay. While bodybuilding was the realm of mainly fitness fanatics in the past, everyone’s lifting weights nowadays, I love seeing people of all ages engage in strength training in my gym.
Functional training is a type of strength training offering additional health benefits - the exercises you perform will help you build strength, power and mobility to prevent injuries, strengthen your core and back to give you more balance, stability and flexibility as you age. Functional training exercises focus on the type of resistance training that is similar to the activities you do in your day-to-day life: picking up objects from the ground, squatting to sit down, pulling yourself up, getting out of the car, etc.
Hybrid fitness
My prediction for 2025 is that many of us will create our own hybrid exercise routines.
Something that Dr Benjamin Levine advocates for all as a strategy to maintain a youthful cardiovascular health long into old age. Dr. Levine is the founder and Director of the Institute for Exercise and Environmental Medicine (IEEM) and Distinguished Professor of Exercise Sciences at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Professor Levine’s prescription for weekly exercise looks like this: one session of aerobic exercise, longer than 1 hour (in zone 2-3); one high-intensity cardio session (zone 4-5) 15 to 20 minutes long; two to three moderate-intensity cardio sessions (zone 2-4) up to 40 minutes long and two to three days of strength training.
Exercise, according to Ben Levine, should be part of our daily routine, like brushing teeth; in his research he has seen the irreversible detrimental effects of sedentary lifestyle on the health of the human heart.
Health trend N 5 - body-mind connection & mindset skills
In the past few years there has been so much research on the benefits of strength training for longevity and reduction of all-cause mortality, that strength training is now on everyone’s radar, young and old. And it is here to stay. While bodybuilding was the realm of mainly fitness fanatics in the past, everyone’s lifting weights nowadays, I love seeing people of all ages engage in strength training in my gym.
Functional training is a type of strength training offering additional health benefits - the exercises you perform will help you build strength, power and mobility to prevent injuries, strengthen your core and back to give you more balance, stability and flexibility as you age. Functional training exercises focus on the type of resistance training that is similar to the activities you do in your day-to-day life: picking up objects from the ground, squatting to sit down, pulling yourself up, getting out of the car, etc.
Hybrid fitness
My prediction for 2025 is that many of us will create our own hybrid exercise routines.
Something that Dr Benjamin Levine advocates for all as a strategy to maintain a youthful cardiovascular health long into old age. Dr. Levine is the founder and Director of the Institute for Exercise and Environmental Medicine (IEEM) and Distinguished Professor of Exercise Sciences at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Professor Levine’s prescription for weekly exercise looks like this: one session of aerobic exercise, longer than 1 hour (in zone 2-3); one high-intensity cardio session (zone 4-5) 15 to 20 minutes long; two to three moderate-intensity cardio sessions (zone 2-4) up to 40 minutes long and two to three days of strength training.
Exercise, according to Ben Levine, should be part of our daily routine, like brushing teeth; in his research he has seen the irreversible detrimental effects of sedentary lifestyle on the health of the human heart.
Health trend N 5 - body-mind connection & mindset skills
Mindfulness, meditation and mindset skill apps will continue to grow exponentially. In year 2025. I see winder medical settings embracing the role of mindset strategies as a necessary component for one’s physical and mental wellbeing. Mental flexibility, self-compassion, resilience, active coping - these are several of the techniques that health coaches and therapists use to help people improve their mental health issues, teaching them to become an active participant in their state of health.
Mental flexibility, for example, also known as cognitive flexibility, refers to the ability to adapt one’s thinking and behaviour patterns in response to changing circumstances, new information and events. Adopting cognitive flexibility has been shown to be a crucial mindset skill for improving mental health by enhancing emotional regulation and resilience, reducing the impacts of stress and lowering anxiety.
Developing the skills for mental flexibility, optimistic outlook, self-efficacy, resilience will hopefully come out from the world of psychology and self development and become the skills to be aspired by many people who will see themselves as active ‘creators’ of their vital health. Mindset sills will foster a proactive, positive approach to life, enriching personal growth, increasing social connections and enhancing overall well-being.
The growth for corporate wellness programmes and the role of coaches will be on the rise, as more employers recognise employees' health and wellbeing as important assets for their businesses. Organisations will prioritise workplace wellness programmes, teaming up with health coaches to create a culture of health and resilience in the workplace. The growth of the corporate wellness market is due to grow by 6.93% between 2023 and 2029, according to Research and Markets.
Health will become personalised for many, as more and more people will recognise the role of lifestyle in the prevention of disease. Holistic health coaches will help people create a personalised approach to their health, working on the aspects of nutrition, exercise, sleep hygiene, stress management and mindfulness. Most importantly, coaches will see their bigger role in helping people identify their unique strengths, values and challenges to help achieve personal goals for optimal wellbeing.
Cheers to personalised health for all!
What do you think year 2025 will see in health trends? Do you agree with my predictions?
Drop me a comment below.
Stay healthy, be joyful!
Love,
Katya