The Disease Map
Nineteen chronic conditions, from Alzheimer's to heart disease, traced back to the same metabolic roots, each tagged with where the evidence stands. We gave it room to breathe on its own page.
Open the interactive Disease Map →A global problem, sharpest at home.
Chronic disease is now the world's biggest killer, and it is climbing fastest where diets have shifted most. The UK sits near the front of that curve.
Across the worldAround 90% of UK diabetes is type 2, the form most closely tied to diet. Steady glucose is the lever we can put on a shelf.
How strong is the evidence?
Most health brands overstate. We would rather show you exactly how sure the science is. Every claim below is graded, from broad scientific consensus to genuinely contested. We lead with the strong stuff and flag the rest.
Each claim below is graded by how strong the evidence is: four bars means broad scientific consensus, one bar means a contested hypothesis.
Insulin resistance is the recognised upstream driver of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and fatty liver disease, often beginning years before diagnosis.
Reaven, Diabetes 1988; Kosmas et al., 2023Metabolic syndrome roughly doubles cardiovascular risk (relative risk 2.35 across about 951,000 people).
Mottillo et al., J Am Coll Cardiol 2010Fatty liver disease was formally renamed to hard-code its metabolic root, and now affects around 38% of adults worldwide.
EASL-EASD-EASO 2024; Younossi et al., 2024In a controlled NIH trial, an ultra-processed diet led people to eat around 500 more calories a day and gain weight, even when matched for sugar, fat and salt.
Hall et al., Cell Metabolism 2019Higher ultra-processed food intake is directly linked to 32 adverse health outcomes across nearly 10 million people.
Lane et al., BMJ 2024Each daily sugary drink raises type 2 diabetes risk by about 27%.
Meng et al., Nutrients 2021
Alzheimer's is increasingly described as "type 3 diabetes", reflecting insulin resistance in the brain.
de la Monte 2008; Peng et al., Ageing Res Rev 2024Type 2 diabetes raises Parkinson's risk by around 21%.
Pooled meta-analysis, odds ratio 1.21Obesity, high insulin and IGF-1 signalling are established risk factors for several cancers, including breast, bowel and pancreatic.
Frontiers in Oncology 2021; Frontiers in Endocrinology 2023
Insulin resistance predicts new-onset depression: a high triglyceride-to-HDL ratio nearly doubled the risk in previously well adults.
Watson et al., Am J Psychiatry 2021The first modern trials of ketogenic and metabolic therapy in serious mental illness show improvements in both metabolic and psychiatric measures.
Sethi et al., Psychiatry Research 2024; Edinburgh pilot, BJPsych Open 2024These are mostly small, early, single-arm trials. Promising and directionally consistent, but not proof.
Some researchers argue cancer is fundamentally a mitochondrial metabolic disease. The underlying Warburg effect is real, but this origin theory is a minority position; mainstream oncology treats cancer as primarily genetic with major metabolic features.
Seyfried, J Bioenerg Biomembr 2025 (debated)
The unifying idea, stated honestly
A growing body of high-impact research argues that mitochondrial dysfunction, insulin resistance, glucose dysregulation and chronic inflammation form a shared substrate beneath many chronic diseases. We state it as a strong, evidence-backed framework, not settled fact: most chronic disease is closely linked to, and substantially driven by, metabolic dysfunction, rather than caused entirely by it.
Diaz-Vegas et al., Endocrine Reviews 2020; Zhao et al., Frontiers in Endocrinology 2023; Lopez-Otin et al., Cell 2023The building blocks
Those shared roots trace back to one thing you can feel day to day: how your body handles glucose. Here are eight quick, playful demos that show how it works.
What food does to your blood sugar
Every food here has the same amount of carbohydrate. What changes is the source, and the source decides the ride your blood sugar takes. Tap a food and watch.
GI (glycemic index) is how high a food drives blood sugar versus pure glucose (100). Lower means gentler. These values come from the study below.
Your average sugar is just a number
Two days can share the exact same average and feel completely different. Drag to make the day bumpier, and watch the average refuse to move.
It is the swings that hurt
Same average, two very different rides. Flip the switch and watch the heart.
Across 4.2 million adults, the biggest glucose swingers had a 69% higher risk of heart failure.
Same meal, different people
Two people eat the exact same breakfast. Watch what happens.
APerson A
BPerson B
Your cells run on tiny engines
Feed them steadily and they charge up. Flood them and they sputter. Flip the supply.
Metabolism reaches the brain
The brain is the hungriest organ you have. So when the body's metabolism improves, the mind often does too. Here is the research.
Fix the metabolism, help the mind
23 adults with serious mental illness ate a metabolic diet for 4 months. Slide from start to finish.
Biggest changes in those who stuck closest to the diet. Small single-arm pilot, 23 people.
Pooling 10 studies on memory
Researchers combined 10 separate trials, 691 people with Alzheimer's. Tap to pool them.
A meta-analysis pools many studies into one bigger picture. The trials varied.
Lifting depression
24 students with depression added a metabolic diet for 12 weeks. Press play.
Depression score, as a share of where they started.
Improvement showed up in 2 to 6 weeks. Early single-arm pilot. Promising, not proof.