I’ve had a strange couple of weeks, and although I’ve come to the laptop a few times to start writing a piece, I’ve not managed to complete it. The first time I tried was the weekend before last, and I felt so rattled by the search for Michael Mosley, British television journalist, writer, and GP, that I was unable to concentrate long enough to complete it. Then when the sad news arrived that Michael’s body had been found, I wanted to write about him and the lasting impact of his brilliant work, but I felt awkward about doing so. I questioned the unexpected level of grief I felt. Why did I feel so sad about a man that I’d never met and didn’t know? I also thought it might be seen as an odd response to try to write about him. Yet as the days passed, there was an outpouring of appreciation for Michael in the media. People who knew him shared the right words, whilst more of the terrible details of his final hours were released. I read it all, wanting to piece together the jigsaw and make sense of something that seemed incomprehensible.
Then at the end of last week, his final recorded interview was released- a conversation with Psychologist, Professor Paul Bloom at last month’s Hay Literary Festival. Professor Bloom shares his top five tips for living a good life, identifying the most important as ‘Know thyself’. The next day over dinner, a friend spoke of her unexpected sadness, with a tear in her eye, and I didn’t feel so alone in my surprising grief. Knowing that I am not the only one affected so significantly by his loss, I decided to follow my heart rather than my head, and to write this week’s article about him, and his work in the field of health and well-being.
I ‘knew’ Michael Mosley, if I can say such a thing about a TV presenter who I never met or spoke to, mostly through the podcast version of his Radio 4 show Just One Thing. In each episode, Michael explored one aspect of well being, interrogating the science behind claims, to suggest just one thing a person could do to improve their health. Michael understood that people wanted to understand the science, without being lectured, or judged. As an experienced medical doctor and skilled presenter, he translated scientific research to real life situations in a way that was accessible, interesting, and often times funny. More importantly he seemed kind, curious, humble, and willing to put himself in uncomfortable situations in the name of learning and self-improvement! Unlike many science based shows, his were always accessible and injected with Michael’s sense of humour. They were energising, making you want to try out what he suggested rather than shrinking in shame at your health failings and advice overwhelm.
I especially liked his Cold Therapy series, which came out in December 2023. One episode was on cold water swimming, and it coincided with my first cold water swimming winter season, giving me the encouragement to keep going, enduring the January and February chill. In another of the episodes he talked about cold houses, and a recurrent argument between him and his wife, Clare, over the thermostat. How he would turn the dial down a couple of notches, whilst she nudged it back up. He subsequently acknowledged the research indicating that women feel the cold more than men, and I remember smiling as I imagined Clare, gleefully taking the thermostat from Michael’s hand and turning it up with a self-satisfied flourish. ‘Just one thing’, I imagined her saying, perhaps used to moderating a tendency for him to take things to the extreme, sitting back into her chair, sipping on a cup of tea, and never more shivering in their too cold home.
These shows proved, that television doctor or not, ultimately Michael was human, doing his best to navigate the world to stay healthy just like the rest of us, offering just one thing that we could do too. He nurtured our curiosity, and made change seem possible, and often even fun.
I was saddened to hear that he was missing, and found myself feeling restless until the terrible news was announced that his body had been found. It is of course sad when anyone dies, but perhaps what struck me hard about Michael’s death, was the ordinariness of it. That he had been going about his life, relaxing on holiday, and he died not from an acute or prolonged illness, nor the horror of war, or the mindless actions of anyone else, but from the combination of utterly ordinary and avoidable unfortunate events.
To forget to take your phone.
To choose to take a walk.
To misjudge the heat of an unfamiliarly hot midday sun.
To run out of water.
To perhaps have become disoriented, taken the wrong path, and be forced to make decisions about the best way to safety. Going on or going back?
The worsening effects of heatstroke.
To have been so close, but not quite making it.
It is hard not to keep imagining it, hoping for a different outcome. No matter how many times I replay the CCTV clip of him walking towards the village, I cannot make his feet find a different way. Our minds cannot help but try to relive it in this way, unready to accept the truth.
It doesn’t make sense. All of the knowledge this man had about what keeps us well, all the joy he brought to people’s lives in sharing it, my mind repeatedly tells me he that should not have died in this way. Yet in this series of simple and unfortunate events, his wife Clare focuses on the fact that Michael lost his life on a hillside, a few meters from safety. He nearly made it, she said.
It is a poignant reminder that we humans, no matter how much we try to avoid thinking about it, are all so very vulnerable, and utterly fallible. Life can leave us in a wingbeat.
A reminder of Virgina Woolf’s musings on the fragility of life in The Death of a Moth, 1942.
Just One Thing
Looking through Michael’s recent podcasts, I am reminded of the broad brush of his approach. He covered the benefits of yoga, volunteering, music, nature, playing an instrument, gardening, early nights, doing the plank, taking vitamin D, being kind, eating slowly, and as I wrote about in my last article, mood enhancing effects of rain. He also promoted the benefits of creativity, such as reading and creative writing. This week I enjoyed listening again to Michael’s recent episode Read a poem, where he speaks about the health benefits of reading poetry out loud.
There is evidence, Mosley says, that writing and reading poetry reduces stress, feelings of loneliness, anxiety, and depression, but in this episode he considers what happens when poetry is read out loud. With the aid of a willing volunteer, Colm, he considers what effect it has to read poetry out loud for 5 minutes a day as part of an evening routine. Colm reports back after a week. Alongside this case study experiment, Michael cites evidence from the UK and USA, and speaks to a Swiss researcher, to consider what it is about reading poetry aloud that makes a difference to our mood.
This, we hear, is said to alter the breathing rate to 12 breaths per minute, activating the parasympathetic nervous system, responsible for rest and digest, so producing a calming effect. It has a greater calming effect than breathing alone, and although the reason is not proven, it is thought that the action of reading draws attention away from the breath to the words. And depending on the content of the poem, the words may have a further positive effect on the reader’s mood.
They talk about the finding that reading at least 3 -4 times a week for a month has a noticeable effect on heart rate variability (HRV). This measure is increasingly useful as an indicator of wellbeing outside the research space because it is often a feature on smartwatches, so becoming more and more accessible to people. HRV is a measure I’ve seen a lot of reference to, and yet I often have to stop to remind myself what it actually means!
HRV is a measurement of the gap in time between heart beats, specifically the difference between the heart beat gaps. This is thought to be an indicator of how well your body adapts to changes in the environment, and the effects of stress (see Harvard Medical School’s Health Publishing Blog for more details here).
The Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) regulates our physiological states in response to our outer and inner world, to keep us in balance without our conscious thought. Depending on how signals to the brain are interpreted, the ANS will trigger a fight-flight response by activating the sympathetic nervous system, or a relaxation response through the parasympathetic nervous system e.g. dilating the pupils and increasing the heart rate when we find ourselves in a stressful situation, or relaxing muscles and slowing the heartrate once the perceived threat has passed.
For there to be variance in the gaps between our heart beats, it generally means we are shifting from a faster heart rate to a slower one, or vice versa. To have high variability, our body goes through a wide range of heart rates. To have low variability, our body will be functioning in a small range of heart rates, which suggests that it is not as responsive to what’s happening in the environment. Usually this will be because we are stuck in the sympathetic states of fight and flight, rather than cruising through life in parasympathetic bliss.
We know that staying in the fight-flight states of the sympathetic nervous system for long periods of time is not ideal, impacting on our health. Research suggests that HRV is higher when we can move from fight and flight into the rest and digest state of the parasympathetic nervous system. Everyone’s HRV will be different, so comparisons between people are not always helpful, rather, there is a suggestion that HRV can be our own personal indicator of our physical fitness and emotional wellbeing. Improvements in our own HRV are thought to be an indicator of improved health and well-being.
Overall, Michael and his guests concluded that reading poetry aloud has a positive impact on our well-being, backed by outcomes of physiological measures and self report. Before you rush off to recite your favourite poetry, the research suggests that the poetic form is important. Critical factors are said to the the rhythm of the poetry- it needs stressed and unstressed syllables, decent line lengths, and to be read for more than 5 minutes, and repeated over time. They give examples of hexameter verse, which they say is typically used in Greek and Latin poetry. I’m not classically educated, but I have read pentameter verse, which has five iambic feet, or beats. Hexameter has six feet, so I would assume 12 syllables to a line, rather than the 10 typically in Shakespearean sonnets.
Free verse, will not have the same effect, we were told. The rhythmical speaking of the hexameter lengthens the exhalation, so that the out breath is three times as long as the in breath. Because joy and satisfaction can also be gained from the words of the poem, it is thought this makes it easier to maintain the task of reading for 5 minutes than it is to undertake a simple breathing exercise. All of this helps makes it more effective than breath work alone.
I guess the exact number matters less than there being a rhythm because the example poem from the research study shared in the show had only 8 syllables, known as iambic tetrameter. I liked the sentiment in the poem too!
Now I shall stay in the garden
there I can stare at my easel
books are my favourite companions
leave me to read them in peace
From Read a Poem, Just one Thing, BBC Radio 4, Michael Mosley, 18th May 2024
Colm, the poetry tester, reported positive changes after a week, both in his levels of anxiety and in his sleep. He enjoyed it. So, Michael offers, if we just do one thing to improve our wellbeing, why not make it reading metered poetry for at least 5 minutes, 3-4 times a week for a month?
His Enduring Advice
I listened to Michael’s last interview with Professor Paul Bloom whilst cleaning my bathroom, scraping the limescale off the tiles, and touching up the group. Contemplating Bloom’s advice about finding meaning in life, the meaning in my life, and and the life of the interviewer Mosley, who engaged with lively interest, humour, self-deprecation, and loving references to his wife, but who was no longer with us. A recipe for an existential mindf##k moment if ever there was one.
I wrote about the interview on this page, but it seems that the repeated popups inviting me to make a choice about something technical whilst I was typing, indicated a significant a glitch in the system that I ought not to have ignored. Consequently, that section of the article is now lost to the ether. The one point I was going to make, is that at the end of the interview, Mosely responded to Professor Bloom’s tips on a good life by highlighting an omission.
Extract from the transcript of the show, available here.
Bloom focussed on the individual. Mosley focussed on the importance of relationships.
I wonder if this is what made me feel unexpectedly grief-stricken by his loss. Somehow, without knowing him at all, I felt unusually connected to Mosley through his podcasts. He spoke to us as viewers and listeners, but above all as fellow humans, who he genuinely cared about and wanted to connect with.
The final words go to someone who knew and worked alongside Michael, Dr Hannah Fry. I’m yet to watch Friday’s documentary, Michael Mosely: The Doctor who Changed Britain, but The Independent quotes Dr Fry as saying-
“Dr Michael Mosley achieved what so many broadcasters dream of: he made a difference to people’s lives, changing the way we see ourselves, our health and our wellbeing.
“And in doing that for so many people, for so many years, he leaves Britain for the better.”
The Independent, Jane Dalton, 17th June 2024
If I reach the end of my life and have a friend or colleague say similar things about me, that I have left the small part of the world in which I have lived better, then that will indeed have been a well lived life.
As I wrote what I thought were the final lines above, a sudden tickling in my cleavage pulled my attention from the page… A creature had found its way in there! I stopped typing to pull the insect out, and watched it crawl across my keyboard and into the darkness of the room beyond the glowing screen.
‘Virginia Woolf!’, I chuckled to myself, ‘Is that you?!
‘I thought of you and your essay ‘The Death of the Moth’ earlier when I posted a picture of the moth. How you invite us to contemplate life, death, and the fragility of human experience. What are you inviting me to do now with this new insect?!’
Just as life had been strange a few minutes before, so death was now as strange. The moth having righted himself now lay most decently and uncomplainingly composed. O yes, he seemed to say, death is stronger than I am.
Virginia Woolf, The Death of The Moth, published 1942, shortly after her death.
Death is stronger than us all.
May we each grab every opportunity to create as good life a life as we can for ourselves, and each other, as Death can come so very unexpectedly.
Thank you for spending your precious time reading my work. With much love.
Please like, comment or share this post if you’ve found it interesting or helpful, and consider subscribing so that you know when new articles are published.
Beautifully wrote. I share your grief about Michael and your conceptualisation of why that might be really resonated.
I didn’t know about the poetry reading phenomena but had noticed I experienced a joy and calmness especially when reading Dr Suess aloud to my son. I’ll now also think of Michael, and you, when I do so. Thank you
This is a touching tribute Jo. I didn't know Michael from the media, but was moved by the story of his death nonetheless. A powerful reminder that the veil separating us from the next world is thin and ever-present ❤️