A Lifetime of Vitality with
Healthspan Coach Mark Quirk MSc CertLM
I’ve always been interested in health. As a teenager (in the eighties!) I read health magazines and experimented with exercise, diet, and supplements. At the time, it was more about looking good, while today, it’s more about feeling good and being healthy.
When you look at the statistics about health and ageing, it’s not terribly encouraging. If we follow the averages for the population of the UK, then we’ll spend the last 15-20 years of our life with some health-related disability – in other words, having to compromise some aspect of our life because of impaired health.
There are no guarantees, but there is plenty of good quality evidence that we can greatly influence our health – and I’m all for beating those averages by many years.
Join me in the primary prevention of ill health, so that we can live our final years with vitality and increase our health span.
Constantly curious and driven by the desire to always make things better.
Profile
Mark holds an MSc in applied psychology, a Certificate in Lifestyle Medicine, Precision Nutrition certifications in nutrition coaching, and as a Master Health Coach. He also spends half of his working week in primary care for the NHS as a health coach, supporting patients with chronic conditions such as cardiovascular-related issues like hypertension, metabolic disorders like type 2 diabetes, fibromyalgia, weight management, and the almost universal challenges of stress and anxiety. This work informs and drives his desire for prevention. Our NHS does a marvellous job at helping those of us who become ill, but that leaves precious few resources to focus on preventing those diseases in the first place.
He is also a member of the Health Coach Alliance, an organization with strict educational and operational guidelines.
Finding paths that work - passion for personalisation
Modern science has taken a long way towards understanding the human body and mind, providing a backdrop of evidence for making wise changes in our lives.
If we have it, let's make decisions based on evidence and your needs and desires. For example,
- Should I reduce the saturated fat in my diet? Given what we know about the impact of saturated fat and blood cholesterol levels (actually, the carriers of blood cholesterol), then yes. But what does a lipid blood test tell you? Perhaps your non-HDL cholesterol or apoB looks brilliant, in which case reducing your saturated fat is probably less impactful than it is for me, where there is a clear impact.
- Does resistance training at the gym have beneficial effects on multiple aspects of our health? Yes. But what if you hate visiting gyms?
The vast science literature provides a backdrop to inform direction, but what works for you, me, or someone else needs to be discovered, which is at the heart of personalisation.
