Candyceuticals: Do gummy supplements work or do they represent the infantilisation of wellness?
But that doesn't seem to have impacted the popularity of gummies. In fact it's not kids driving the boom, it's adults. Gummy supplements are everywhere and in some cases, they're being marketed as highly effective luxury products with huge aspirational campaigns behind them.
According to biochemist and influencer Jessie Inchauspé, who goes by 'Glucose Goddess' online, 'If you have a bottle of vinegar gummies, go throw it out immediately. They are no better than having candy. Vinegar gummies contain two grams of sugar. That's as much sugar as in two candy gummy bears. They are not good for your health.'
I've been informed as much by several nutritionists in casual conversations about which supplements you should actually bother taking. Despite some brands being far better than others where sugar content is concerned, gummies have never scored particularly highly on my ongoing list of expert-approved supplements.
As a wellness editor, I've been sent a ton of variations on the gummy vitamin. And despite knowing they probably won't impact my health, I've enjoyed testing them. My favourites are the 'beauty' gummies from functional mushroom brand Dirtea. These cute little heart-shaped squishes taste like peach, contain tremella mushroom and biotin and supposedly contain no sugar whatsoever – though the first four ingredients are sweeteners and that's before you even get to the mushroom content.
I've also been invited to sample the now somewhat iconic apple cider vinegar gummy in many iterations, as well as hangover gummies, gummies for period pain and perimenopause gummies for lessening hormonal symptoms. Which begs the question: why are candyceuticals such a big deal for adults? Can't we just take a pill or stick a patch on? Unless you have a medical condition that means you can't swallow a tablet, it's surely not that hard to do?
I'd argue that there's a shift at play here. As wellness becomes more fashionable, it's become more watered down. Health is cool now, but being healthy? Unfortunately that does require some effort, which is why so many products now offer the opportunity to perform wellness, rather than the real deal. The ' morning shed ' trend is a prime example of how these types of products are making their way into our lives.
It's easy to take a gummy supplement for your gut or your hair, skin and nails, because it's equivalent to a delicious treat and makes you feel as though you've done something good for your body. Eating the right foods for your gut or skin consistently? That requires a lot more work, from shopping for and preparing the right foods to consuming them regularly – a nightmare if you're not keen to eat 30 plants a week.
The watering down of wellness has resulted in the infantilisation of the industry. Complex workouts have given rise to 'this one easy trick' and eating a healthy amount of protein has taken the shape of marshmallow rocky road protein bars that also taste suspiciously like candy.
The wellness industry is also openly targeting teens – the ideal consumers of brightly coloured mouth tape and ashwagandha gummies. But in a world where the rules of good health are now required to be cute, easy and that much sweeter in order to be followed, what impact is this having on our bodies?
Amy Peacock founder of Earth's Secret says: 'Gummies are an alternative way for people to take supplements instead of capsules, but depending on how many gummies they take a day, this could be similar to taking the same amount of jelly beans a day. As they both contain sugar or sugar alcohols.'
She adds: 'Gummies can contain vitamins and minerals, but to be chewed like a gummy they will require additional ingredients like glucose syrup, sugar and pectin to create the gummy texture. This can dilute the active ingredient content and add unnecessary sugars. They also often need higher stabilisers and preservatives to maintain shelf life. 'Healthy' gummies will use sucrolose or aspartame most of the time.'
Aside from the added sugar and sweeteners transforming vitamins into sweeties, there's also the question of whether gummies actually deliver any of the nutrients they claim to. Sweet fruity flavours have the power to trick the brain into believing it's actually consuming something with a nutrient-dense profile when it fact, it's mainly sugar.
Peacock also explains that many types of supplement are actually incompatible with the gummy format due to their sensitivity to heat. Gummies are made by heating and then setting all the ingredients, which can compromise the potency and bioavailability of probiotics, magnesium and vitamin D.
Joe Netherwood of Known Nutrition notes: 'The supplement industry is awash with misleading claims and products that may not contain what they say. This is part of the industry I find incredibly troubling. There are now so many supplement brands sharing false information, especially through their social marketing.'
One of Netherwood's chief concerns is the creatine gummy market. He explains that after a class action lawsuit in the US, concerns regarding the level of actual creatine in UK gummies were raised. Netherwood and his team sent creatine gummies made by several brands for testing at a leading third-party laboratory and one came back showing no detectable creatine at all.
'This case is just the tip of the iceberg in a largely unregulated industry where anyone can start a supplement brand,' he says. 'There is no requirement to prove what's in a supplement, only that it's safe to consume. Even labelling regulations are full of grey areas and often overlooked. Gummies are an emerging, fast-growing category and the rapid rise of gummies over the last five years has led to new, inexperienced manufacturers rushing products to market without proper formulation or testing.'
Despite the ease with which you can take a gummy and how tasty they are, when it comes to the efficacy of their nutrient profile, they're simply not as effective as a supplement in capsule form. 'Capsules remain the best due to being able to choose a supplement with no additives or fillers and provide precise dosing, and offer better absorption than gummies' says Peacock.
'While gummies might seem more appealing, especially for those who struggle with pills, they represent a compromise between convenience and efficacy.'
Of course, capsules vary in quality too and in some rare cases you may find a gummy that actually offers a better nutrient profile than a capsule, however the capsule would have to be pretty poor for this to be the case. Ultimately, choosing a quality brand is a significant factor in whether or not you'll feel the benefits of any supplement and the less sugar, fillers, additives and unnecessary ingredients your vitamins contain, the better.
If you're not willing to give up on gummies, for whatever reason, Peacock advises checking the sugar content and looking for artificial colours before you buy. She also recommends considering the exact dosage you need to take to make an impact. 'You may actually need to take more gummies to match capsule potency, but consider your sugar intake and how this will affect your gut health,' she adds.
Personally, I'd rather stick with a capsule, a patch or an oral solution when it comes to supplements. Or better yet, getting the essential nutrients my body needs from a varied diet – this simply isn't something you can cheat at, no matter what the next big gummy vitamin campaign tells you.
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Telegraph
19-07-2025
- Telegraph
I tracked every single thing I ate and drank on holiday – the results were shocking
If you're anything like me, then the whole point of a week away on holiday is that you can eat and drink as much as you want, guilt-free. But how many of us can properly switch off? Too often, phantom calorie counts float next to the delicious treats listed on restaurant menus or presented in the windows of patisseries. Inevitably, there is panic, as the jeans worn on the flight to somewhere sunny refuse to button on the return home. Add to this a long string of hangovers and the general sluggishness that follows a week of heavy dinners, and you can find yourself more drained by a trip away than you were before it. Yet the positive effects that come with a week of R&R aren't to be underestimated. Holidays can be good for the health of our muscles, hearts, brains and blood sugar alike. So, earlier this year, I went off to Greece armed with a glucose tracker and the determination to keep a food diary but still enjoy myself, to see how much damage a week of ice cream, souvlaki and wine can really do to your health. The glucose tracker in my arm was there to tell me about how all of these carbs could 'spike' my blood sugar, leading to potential consequences for my health later down the line. Going to a Mediterranean country wasn't cheating. Yes, there's plenty of fresh vegetables and your food is more likely cooked in olive oil than butter, making it better for your heart and your skin. But there's also deep fried feta, chips inside of massive pita wraps, huge trays of baklava, and many different kinds of spirits to contend with. I went to Athens and then an island, with two friends and my boyfriend, who, thanks to spending a lot of time in the gym, usually eats about 4,000 calories a day. Foodwise I pretty much kept up with him for the whole trip away. For breakfast on our first day I had a huge bowl of creamy full-fat Greek yoghurt, topped with tahini, banana, honey and nuts. Lunch was a halloumi souvlaki, stuffed with chips and some kind of delicious yellow sauce. I split a box of baklava as a snack with one of my friends and then for dinner, I had a huge bowl of orzo with mushrooms, a side of (more) chips, and dessert, a platter of Greek treats split between the four of us. In true first-night-away style we got through five litres of wine. In our defence, it was 11 euros a jug. (Then I went back to our AirBnB and ate four croissants meant for the morning to soak it up). I might have earned some of that with a walk up the acropolis (thankfully, we hadn't planned it for the morning afterwards) but the rest of the holiday was spent lazing about. We all took it a bit easier on the booze but made up for it in food. Most mornings started with Greek yoghurt, but the nights ended with huge dinners, snacks afterwards, and a dessert like loukoumades (donuts covered in hard sugar) to finish. At home I try not to snack too much (a rule of keeping your blood sugar in check) but while I was away I ate anything I stumbled across that looked half-tasty. All in all, I totally pigged out and I drank more than I do in an average month. What would this blip in my usual moderate lifestyle mean for my health in the long run? Lauren's diet: at home vs abroad How bad is it really to gain a few pounds on holiday? I'm not here to tell you to starve on holiday. As personal trainer Dalton Wong helpfully puts it, 'losing holiday weight is easy, but you'll never get back the time that you spend away'. Yet the truth is that a sudden jump in weight can be jarring. When I got on the scale after my week in Greece, I weighed a full half a stone more than I had done when I left. I'd be lying if I said it didn't bother me. Did all the cheese and pita bread I ate really do that much damage? Probably not, Wong says. 'That jump won't just be fat but also water retention, caused by eating a lot of salty food, and probably a bit of fat depending on how much you've eaten,' he explains. If you're someone who does a lot of strength training, 'you might even put on a bit of lean muscle mass, because you're giving your muscles the good rest and nutrients that they need to actually grow'. As Wong often reassures his clients, you would have to eat a truly enormous amount of food to put on half a stone of fat in a week. A single pound of fat gained requires 'about 500 extra calories every day on top of the amount you need to maintain your weight,' he explains. As such, the reality is that a week of overindulgence likely won't make you gain more than two or three pounds at most, even if, like me, you've ended up reaching to the back of your wardrobe for an extra pair of trousers. I think I ate at least 4,000 calories a day. To maintain my weight I need about 2,000, roughly what I eat when I'm at home. It's not all as simple as calories in, calories out, either, however. 'Your body has a set point that it really wants to stay at,' says nutritionist Jenna Hope. Once you return from holiday, your body works hard to bring your weight back down to its usual levels, a process that can be masked by water weight and constipation. 'A week or two, or even three, outside of your norm might not actually cause weight gain at all, because you aren't causing any long-term changes to your metabolic activity,' so long as you go back to your normal habits. For this reason, Wong advises that you 'avoid weighing yourself for four weeks after you get home,' he says. 'Anything you see differently in the scales then might be actual fat, but until then, what you're seeing likely isn't real weight gain.' Sure enough, after a week back at home I was only three pounds heavier than I was when I landed in Athens; after a month, I was back to my usual weight. Given the power of your set point, shifting the weight can be as simple as 'going for an extra walk after lunch,' says Wong. If you really are concerned about putting on weight on holiday, 'either eat or drink your calories,' he advises. 'Have the extra cocktail or the slice of cake, not both. You'll likely be satisfied with one and feel a bit healthier afterwards.' What happens on the inside? The scales don't tell the full story, however. Studies that examine what a week of overindulgence does to your body only present bad news. One Oxford University study reveals that three weeks of eating badly is enough to raise your risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. Their participants were fed a diet high in sat-fats (crisps, cheese, chocolate and pizza) for 24 days, and while their weight didn't budge, their cholesterol levels spiked by 10 per cent, and the fat in their liver increased by a fifth. A summer trip can also give you an 'obese brain', another recent paper from the University of Tubingen in Germany found (clearly, holiday-spoiling is a flourishing academic niche). Just five days of eating a poor diet is enough to cause changes to our brains that outlive 'the timeframe of the consumption', reports Professor Stephanie Kullmann. After eating an extra 1,000 calories a day for five days, 'the brain and behaviour response resemble that of a person with obesity and changes in the brain seem to occur prior to weight gain.' What can also change quickly is our gut microbiome. 'A week or two weeks of eating differently and not getting enough fibre is long enough to see some changes in the makeup of your gut,' says Hope. The happiness of your gut is a core to good energy levels, proper digestion, immune function and even keeping you in a good mood. Spending time away in a totally different food environment is part of why we can come back from holiday feeling more sluggish and constipated than ever before. From the food log before and after my holiday, and while I was away, it's clear that I was eating more than I usually would for a few weeks on either side. I'd have an extra pint of beer or glass of wine on a Wednesday and I'd often veer towards something heavy in fat and salt and therefore attractive to my 'obese brain' for dinner post-holiday. I'm sure that my gut was not impressed. 'If you go away multiple times a year, it can be really hard to reset and not slide into bad habits,' Hope says. Fortunately, this is easily avoided. 'Preparing your breakfasts and lunches for the week that you're back home can be really helpful, as it removes the element of spontaneous choice and helps you make better decisions,' says Hope. 'It can be really helpful to order a grocery shop to arrive on the day that you're back.' To make it even easier for yourself, 'try having a healthy breakfast on the days that you're away, rather than diving into the hotel buffet and having everything you can see,' she adds. Having one healthy meal a day makes it much easier to get back to normal once you're home, and if it's high in protein, you won't instantly reach for a snack as soon as you leave your hotel. (And if you're in the land of thick, creamy Greek yoghurt, like I was, it won't feel like a sacrifice.) Will a holiday raise your blood sugar? Blood sugar monitors are increasingly being worn by people who aren't diabetic. The way they work is that you stick them into your arm (there's a small needle, but you can't feel it once it's in), and then you can monitor the amount of sugar that's in your blood after you've eaten from an app on your phone. Ups and downs are normal, but dramatic spikes after meals or prolonged periods of super-high blood sugar can indicate insulin resistance. This is a sign that your body is struggling to handle the amount of sugar you're feeding it, and is a precursor for type 2 diabetes. Discovering the foods that 'spike' you can help you prevent this in the long term, and this can also help you to avoid the sluggishness and fatigue caused by the crashes that follow. It was interesting to see that a typical day in Greece eating a lot of carby and sugary foods made my blood sugar soar. But I can't say it made me behave any differently. I did get a few weird looks from other tourists and it does ruin the bikini photos. The really useful bit came when I looked at my results after landing in Britain. I wore my patch, from Lingo by Abbott before, during, and after my holiday. In the week that I came home, my average blood sugar fell to being 95 per cent lower than it had been while I was away. At first I was shocked. Clearly my body had gone into panic mode because of how much I'd eaten. The stats sound dramatic on paper but in both cases, my average blood sugar remained in a 'healthy' range overall, only briefly rising or falling to unhealthy levels. Such a return to normal is a good sign: 'this shows that you're in good metabolic health and that your body is responding with insulin in a normal way,' says Sophie Bertrand, Abbott's nutritionist. Your blood sugar levels are a result of homeostasis, the complex bodily process that keeps us functioning as normal. It's hard to disrupt this process in a serious way by overeating for a week, Bertrand says. If you're in your twenties and have a BMI that marks you as healthy, like me, then you can eat whatever you like for a short while and be fine in this regard, but this process works less well as you age. Seeing its effects was helpful. 'Someone who's older might find that they have more problems bringing their blood sugar down to normal,' says Bertrand. Over time, this is an issue that can raise your chances of developing insulin resistance, a major risk factor for type 2 diabetes. About 40 per cent of us in Britain are insulin resistant. With this in mind I'll probably start approaching holidays a bit differently as I age. But regardless of your health, there are ways to get back to normal more quickly regardless of your age. Again, a protein-rich breakfast is king: 'this will help to avoid big fluctuations in your blood sugar throughout the day,' says Bertrand. 'Your sleep is also really important in keeping your blood sugar levels stable. Take the opportunity to grab a few more hours each night than you might at home.' Regardless of what you're eating or how much you're sleeping, a quick walk after dinner can work well 'to balance out your blood sugar' too. Besides, the chance to let loose can be good for us. Regularly going on holiday can lower your chances of dying from heart disease in the long run, and can also bring improvements to your blood sugar and 'good' cholesterol levels. As Bertrand puts it, 'a week of treats is much better than a routine filled with less healthy food or binges that follow restricting yourself too severely'. Do you need to worry about your step count? All of this ignores a fact that's fundamental to the concept of holidays: a week or more of relaxation does us provable good. Stress – both the physical and mental kind – can wreak havoc on our health. If you're the kind of person who exercises a lot, a week spent abstaining from lifting heavy weights or sprinting on the treadmill, presents a much-needed break for your joints and muscles. As a result, 'some of the weight you put on while you're on holiday might well be lean muscle mass,' says Wong. That said, keeping your step count up can actually offset the potential damage done to your health by eating outside of the norm. 'Going for a walk before or after dinner is a good way to help bring your blood sugar back down to a healthy range,' says Bertrand. And what's more, you'll probably find it easier to get them in while you're away than you do at home. I certainly did: my average steps per day are 12,000 as per my health tracker, but I got in 15,000 a day in Athens, and it didn't occur to me that I was exercising. Do I regret letting loose on holiday? Not at all. As Jenna Hope says, the really crucial thing for your health is how quickly you go back to normal after your holidays, and making sure that you don't live with your 'holiday brain' between them. Next time I go away, I'll be sure to plan some healthy meals for the week that I get back, and I'll try to find ways to keep my step count up while I'm away too, to counter the effects of eating badly. I'm not sure that I'd take a glucose tracker with me again, but it's certainly helpful to know that beer spikes me more than wine, and that baklava does less damage than chips. Best of all is that, having looked at the changes to my body, I now know that with some thought, I can keep enjoying holidays the way I want for the rest of my life.
Medical News Today
15-07-2025
- Medical News Today
Eating late in the evening could make blood sugar control harder for the body
Our bodies process food differently depending on the time of day, with metabolism generally more active in the late eating is linked to obesity and heart disease, its exact effects on glucose metabolism and the role of genetics are still unclear.A new twin study from Germany now offers fresh insight into how meal timing interacts with our internal clocks and overall circadian system is a complex 24-hour timekeeping system that controls behaviour and metabolism through a central clock in the brain and additional clocks in organs such as the liver and of this system, our metabolism responds differently depending on when we eat, resulting in daily variations in glucose processing and hormone release after intake itself serves as an important signal that helps align our internal at times that are out of sync with the natural light-dark cycle, for example, when working night shifts, can disrupt these internal clocks and lead to adverse metabolic at the German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbrücke (DIfE) have recently investigated the link between blood sugar metabolism and evening eating times using data from a twin study conducted in 2009– findings are published in the journal do we calculate circadian rhythms?Earlier research has shown that consuming meals late at night is linked to a higher risk of obesity and heart we still do not fully understand how meal timing interacts with a person's individual circadian rhythm and affects glucose metabolism and diabetes addition, the specific mechanisms behind when and why people eat remain unclear, as eating habits are shaped by a mix of cultural, situational, genetic and other biological timing of food intake in relation to a person's biological daily rhythm can be assessed by looking at the gap between mealtime and the midpoint of sleep midpoint refers to the time exactly halfway between falling asleep and waking up, and it indicates a person's chronotype, that is, whether they tend to be an early bird or a night late-night eating affects insulin sensitivityThe NUGAT study was carried out between 2009 and 2010 at the German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbrücke (DIfE).To recruit participants, researchers used a twin registry (HealthTwiSt, Berlin, Germany) and public advertisements. In total, 92 individuals (46 pairs of identical and fraternal twins) took the twins completed two nutritional interventions during the study, these interventions were not relevant to the results discussed participants underwent comprehensive metabolic assessments, which included physical exams, medical history reviews, body measurements, and glucose tolerance tests. Their individual chronotypes were identified using a addition, each participant kept handwritten food diaries over 5 consecutive days (3 weekdays and 2 weekend days), recording the start and end times of each meal along with details on the type and quantity of food approach helped capture a realistic picture of their usual eating the analysis indicated that people who tended to have their final meal later in the day and closer to bedtime also had less effective glucose (blood sugar) metabolism at the end of the day, as they had lower insulin may suggest that better regulating our meal times may help maintain our metabolic you avoid eating late in the evening?Destini Moody, RD, CSSD, LD, registered dietitian at Top Nutrition Coaching, not involved in this research, reviewed the study and spoke to Medical News Today about its findings.'In general, I'm skeptical about adjusting the timing of one's eating in the hopes of controlling weight or blood sugar unless you are diabetic,' Moody told us.'My colleague and I used to joke that your digestive system doesn't work in shifts, meaning it doesn't 'clock out' after a certain time of day and decide to start storing everything as fat,' she added.'While it's well known that eating timing and meal composition is critical for controlling blood sugar and insulin action in those with diabetes, this study was performed on healthy individuals with normal pancreatic function and no other metabolic disturbances. Even without diabetes, those with metabolic syndrome should be careful about their level of insulin resistance, but none of the subjects fell under this category either given their BMI and waist circumference. The average age of subjects was also 32, which is relatively young.'– Destini Moody, RD, CSSD, LD'As far as the genetic component of how eating timing influences insulin sensitivity, this is a mixed bag, [too]' Moody further noted. 'On the one hand, it's an interesting finding, but on the other hand, genetic factors are difficult to detect and control.''In general, blood sugar variations are a natural part of digestion and metabolism, and I would urge the public to refrain from stressing about the effects food may have on their blood sugar unless they have metabolic ailments like type 2 diabetes,' she she did emphasize that it is always important to pay attention to how much fiber we ingest, and how much of it comes from refined explained:'Foods with added sugars, that have been made with refined grains, and are generally low in fiber will raise blood sugar quickly and send it crashing back down due to a rebound effect. This tends to make people even hungrier and even cause fatigue, which is why you feel sleepy after having meals high in these types of carbs. Luckily, eating whole grains and high fibers fruits and vegetables along with lean protein can not only help mitigate this effect, but often results in a healthier diet overall that helps prevent the risk of chronic disease.'
Daily Mirror
14-07-2025
- Daily Mirror
'My baby son almost died from measles - it's a terror no child should have'
As concerns grow over a recent measles outbreak in the UK, mum and author Catherine Cooper has shared her experiences of caring for her baby through measles, and the anger she felt towards those responsible It's been 22 years, and Catherine Cooper has never forgotten when her eldest child, Toby, contracted measles. Now she has a stern warning for anti-vax parents who actively choose not to vaccinate their children against potentially deadly diseases. Toby was just eight months old when he caught measles, a highly infectious and potentially harmful viral illness that begins with cold-like symptoms and then a rash. Catherine, now 54, believes Toby became infected at the creche at the gym she used to go to, back when the family was living in South London. At the time, Catherine's "normal little baby" was too young to have the MMR vaccine, which offers protection against measles, mumps, and rubella. Looking back, the distressing situation she found herself in makes her angry. READ MORE: 'My daughter died after getting measles as a baby - this is my plea' Sunday Times bestselling author Catherine, who now lives in the South of France, told the Mirror:" I don't think I was a particularly fretful mother. I mean, obviously, he was my first child, but I wasn't someone who was overly fretful. I wasn't someone who was at the doctor every five minutes or anything with him." Although Toby had had all the vaccinations he was supposed to have in the first few months of his life, but had to wait until he was one to have his MMR jab. Catherine noticed there was something up when Toby developed a rash, red eyes and a temperature, and took him to the doctor's. She recalled: "He was obviously ill, but normally if he was ill, I'd give him Calpol and keep an eye on him and normally, like most babies, he'd be better later that day or the next day. "But that time, I think maybe it was because of the rash, I thought, 'No, that's not really right, he needs to go to the doctor'." Catherine thankfully managed to get a doctor's appointment quite quickly. She was also fortunate in that their "doctors were pretty good, particularly with babies". After ringing the GP's surgery and informing them that her baby had a rash, Catherine and Toby were brought in quite quickly. She remembered: "I remember somebody, I think it was probably the doctor, saying, 'Okay, let's see that baby with the rash next because we don't want him sitting around in the waiting room'. So I took him in, and it was a middle-aged doctor, and she said, 'Well, you know, I'm sorry to tell you, but it looks like he's got measles'." Expressing the shock she felt upon hearing this distressing news, Catherine added: "I was like, 'what?' Because, as far as I was concerned, that was something that didn't really happen anymore. It was really rare. And she actually said, 'Do you mind if I show my colleague, who is a younger doctor, because she's probably never seen a case of measles before?'. And I said, 'No, that's fine'. So she brought her in and they had a look at him." The stunned mum was then told to take her child home and care for him there, all while keeping "a close eye on him". After a quiet week of being treated with Calpol and lots of rest, Toby came out the other side absolutely fine. She knows, however, that things could have been very different, and that her son had been very "lucky". In severe cases, measles can result in serious complications, including meningitis, blindness, pneumonia and seizures. A child recently died at Liverpool's Alder Hey Children's Hospital from measles, which has expressed alarm over "the increasing number of children and young people who are contracting measles". For Catherine, this incident brings back dreadful memories. At the time when little Toby fell ill, South London was something of a "hot spot" for parents who weren't getting their kids vaccinated. This was back when many still followed the advice of anti-vaccine activist and fraudster Andrew Wakefield, whose 1998 Lancet MMR autism study inaccurately linked autism to the MMR vaccine. Alarmist publicity over this widely debunked study resulted in a steep decline in vaccination uptake, resulting in various measles outbreaks. Between the years 1996 and 2002, rates of MMR vaccination dropped from 91.8 per cent to 81 per cent in England and Wales. In some regions, including in London, the coverage rate dropped to less than 60 per cent. For parents like Catherine, who fully support vaccinations, they too were left suffering as outbreaks spread into creches and nurseries. She's now urged others to consider other people's children as well as their own before making what is all too often viewed as an individual choice. Catherine said, "It hadn't been my choice. He wasn't old enough for MMR. If I had chosen for him not to have MMR, then I would have blamed myself, but I didn't because he wasn't old enough, so I blamed whoever had made that choice, almost for him, really. "And I think this is what people don't really appreciate, is they're not only making a choice for their own child, they're making a choice for all the other children or people that that child potentially comes into contact with. "And particularly if you're really immunosuppressed or if you have other illnesses, it can be particularly dangerous. But even for a healthy child, it can be dangerous." Disgraced Wakefield was struck off the medical register for "serious professional misconduct" in 2010, following an inquiry by the General Medical Council (GMC), while The Lancet has now fully retracted Wakefield's discredited study. Unfortunately, Wakefield's shadow still looms large and, in a world of widespread misinformation, experts have noted a disturbing trend. Indeed, as per the UK Health Security Agency, there were 2,911 laboratory-confirmed measles cases in England in 2024 - the highest annual number on record since 2012. With a wealth of readily available information at their fingertips, one could presume that today's parents would have the ability to research and debunk myths with greater ease than those before them. Catherine isn't surprised to find this isn't the case. Her own painful experiences have left her with "an almost unhealthy interest" in misinformation and conspiracy theories. She explained: "It's mainly the growth of social media. It's now very easy to take your theory and get it out there, and if you do it in the right way, I mean, the right way for you, people will believe it. I think back in the day, I guess these people probably still existed, but they couldn't get their message out quite so rampantly. "In some ways it is surprising because with the internet it should be easy to keep yourself informed, but in some ways it's not surprising because there's so much bad information out there that's very easily accessible and of course, the way the algorithms work, once you start looking at this thing, you're fed more and more and more until it becomes self-perpetuating." Toby is now a 23-year-old engineering student, but for Catherine, the memory of caring for her sick baby remains, and the ordeal has had a significant impact on her life. It even inspired part of the plot of her second novel, The Chateau - although you'll have to purchase the twisty thriller for yourself to find out more. The fictional world aside, Catherine now takes every opportunity she sees to spread awareness about the importance of vaccinations and tackling health misinformation. However, she admits it isn't always easy to persuade those who are already stuck in this fixed mindset. She reflected: "It seems to have blown up so much, particularly since Covid. I do think it's a worry because once somebody's got into this mindset, it's very, very hard to get them out of it. While I do like to speak about my experience of this, part of me knows that it's probably not going to make that much difference because people who are really, really ingrained in it are going to just be like, 'Oh okay, well she would say that'." Issuing a warning to others, Catherine continued: "I think people kind of have the attitude of, 'Oh, it won't happen to me, it won't happen to my child, and it does happen. Toby was lucky; he was fine, but some children aren't."
