Last week, Dr Mick Watts and Dr Clare Nieland from The Windsor Wellness Clinic hosted our Men's Health Matters evening at Windsor Rugby Club, and what a brilliant evening it was.
It was fun, informal, incredibly well attended and generated some fantastic conversations. We used real-life case studies to explore cardiovascular and metabolic health, nutrition, muscle and strength, testosterone, sexual health, prostate health, sleep, alcohol and mental wellbeing.
We also had plenty of questions about supplements and the wellness industry, a subject on which Mick and Clare don't always completely agree! We think that deserves a blog of its own.
For now, these were the messages we most wanted people to take home.
Know your numbers
You can feel perfectly well while important risk factors are quietly accumulating. High blood pressure, for example, often causes no symptoms, yet raises the risk of heart attack, stroke, heart failure, kidney disease and vascular dementia.
Most men should have some understanding of:
Blood pressure
Waist circumference
Blood glucose or HbA1c
Cholesterol
Smoking and alcohol exposure
Family history
The important concept is trajectory. Type 2 diabetes doesn't suddenly appear the morning an HbA1c crosses a diagnostic threshold: insulin resistance and metabolic changes may have been developing for years. That's actually a positive message: it gives us time to change direction.
Make real food the default
Nutrition has become unnecessarily complicated: low-carb, low-fat, keto, vegan, carnivore, fasting, eat breakfast, skip breakfast. Behind all that noise, there is considerable agreement:
Eat plenty of plants and fibre
Include nuts and seeds
Get enough good-quality protein
Choose minimally processed foods and healthy fats such as extra-virgin olive oil
A Mediterranean-style diet has some of the strongest evidence for cardiovascular health. In the PREDIMED trial, those following a Mediterranean diet supplemented with extra-virgin olive oil or nuts had around a 30% lower relative risk of major cardiovascular events.[1]
The simplest advice: make real, home-prepared food your default. In a controlled trial, people offered an ultra-processed diet spontaneously consumed around 500 calories more per day than when eating an unprocessed diet.[2] Our food environment matters. It isn't all about willpower.
Train for your 80-year-old self
Muscle isn't just cosmetic tissue. It plays an important role in metabolic health, glucose disposal, bone health and our physical reserve as we age, and ultimately, it's about independence: getting yourself off the floor, carrying your shopping, walking upstairs, travelling, playing with your grandchildren.
From around our thirties, muscle mass may decline by approximately 3–8% per decade, with losses accelerating later in life.[3] So don't exercise only for the body you want next summer. Train for your 80-year-old self:
Resistance: push, pull, squat, hinge, carry
Cardio: walk, run, swim, cycle, play sport, and occasionally get properly out of breath
Find something you enjoy enough to keep doing. Consistency beats the "perfect" programme you abandon after three weeks.
Testosterone, erections and men's health
Testosterone deficiency is real and, when present, deserves proper investigation and appropriate treatment. But tiredness, reduced libido, low mood, loss of strength and poor recovery aren't specific to low testosterone: poor sleep, excess weight, alcohol, stress, medication, chronic illness and obstructive sleep apnoea can produce similar symptoms. So don't diagnose yourself from a social-media checklist, but equally, don't dismiss genuine symptoms.
The same applies to erectile dysfunction. An erection is, amongst other things, a vascular event. New erectile dysfunction can sometimes provide an early opportunity to look at wider cardiovascular and metabolic health, including blood pressure, cholesterol, glucose, smoking, weight and medication. Sometimes the symptom that gets a man through the door allows us to look at much more than his sex life.
What about PSA?
PSA testing can help identify prostate cancer, but it isn't a perfect screening test: PSA can be raised for reasons other than cancer, some prostate cancers don't raise PSA, and testing can lead to further investigations for cancers that may never have caused harm.
The UK does not currently recommend population-wide PSA screening, although targeted screening is now recommended for a small group of men at particularly high genetic risk.[4] For other men, PSA testing should be an informed decision based on individual risk. Prostate Cancer UK recommends discussing PSA testing from 50, or from 45 for men at higher risk, including Black men and those with a family history.[5]
Don't ignore the signals
Most symptoms aren't cancer, and nobody needs to rush to the doctor every time something aches. But persistent unexplained changes deserve attention:
A new testicular lump
Blood in your stool or urine
Persistent bowel changes
Unexplained weight loss
A changing or non-healing skin lesion
Men can be particularly good at saying, "I'll give it another couple of weeks." There comes a point when those couple of weeks have gone on for long enough.
Ready to know your numbers?
At The Windsor Wellness Clinic, our approach to men's health is preventative, personalised and evidence-based, looking at the whole picture rather than simply an isolated symptom or blood result.
As a thank-you to everyone who attended our Men's Health Matters evening, all attendees can receive 30% off their initial GP consultation throughout October 2026. We can also arrange a bespoke panel of blood tests, tailored to your health, individual risk factors and goals. Price on application.
If the evening made you think, "I really should get that checked," don't put it off.
Contact The Windsor Wellness Clinic to book an appointment or find out more.
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