The Naked Heart

Are You Leucined Up? Why One Amino Acid Decides Whether Your Patient Holds On To Muscle After Sixty

After 60, muscle becomes deaf to protein signals. You need 3 grams of leucine per meal, not just daily totals, to flip your muscle-building switch. Same protein portions that worked at 40 barely register at 70. Threshold dosing with resistance training breaks this cycle. Read full article [https://www.vat-trap.com/post/are-you-leucined-up]

The Choice

Traditional weight loss approaches fail because they treat metabolism as fixed rather than dynamic. The Choice model combines weekly micro-decisions between lifestyle changes and medication adjustments, offering a flexible system that adapts to continuous metabolic changes and breaks the cycle of initial success followed by plateau and regain. https://www.vat-trap.com/post/metabolic-doom-loop-choice

What's Good for the Heart Is Good for the Brain

The four pillars of coronary prevention map directly onto dementia risk reduction through shared vascular mechanisms. Cardiovascular risk factors in midlife predict cognitive decline decades later, making optimal heart health our strongest defence against age-related cognitive impairment and dementia. Read Blog [https://www.vat-trap.com/post/heart-brain-connection]

Measuring Your Blood Pressure At Home

Done well, a week of home readings is more informative than almost anything that can be measured in a single clinic visit. Here is the method I have used, refined over twenty years — and a free calculator that does the averaging for you. Read the full blog and link to a free blood pressure tool here [https://www.vat-trap.com/post/measure-blood-pressure-home-free-app]

The Elephant in the Room

Naked Heart is now hosted by Author Dr Leatham's cardiometabolic health channel launched 1st June 2026 www.vat-trap.com. What better topic than a look at recent ACC/AHA guidelines for cholesterol targets and no note that cardiovascular deaths fell 70–80% in sixty years — one of medicine's greatest triumphs. But progress is now slowing. Visceral fat, not LDL-C, is the upstream driver of the four real epidemic diseases: atrial fibrillation, heart failure, type 2 diabetes, and dementia. The VAT-TRAP four-pillar framework addresses all four simultaneously. Read full article [https://www.vat-trap.com/post/the-elephant-in-the-room]