Movember has done something genuinely useful: it has made men’s health a conversation rather than a silence. But a moustache and a donation only take you so far. The harder, quieter work is knowing your own numbers – and knowing which ones actually change as the years pass.
Most of the decline men worry about does not announce itself. Blood pressure creeps, waistlines expand by a centimetre a year, fasting glucose drifts upward inside the ‘normal’ range for a decade before anyone calls it anything. None of it hurts. That is precisely why it is worth measuring.
Below are the metrics I would want any man over 40 to know, in plain terms: what to measure, why it moves with age, and what nutrition and daily habits can honestly influence. Nothing here replaces your GP. Think of it as the map you bring to that conversation.
1. Waist-to-height ratio
This is the single most useful number a man can track at home and almost nobody does. Take your waist measurement at the midpoint between the bottom of your ribs and the top of your hip bone, then divide by your height in the same units.
A ratio under 0.5 is the target – your waist should be less than half your height. Above that, and you are carrying visceral fat around the organs, which is the fat most strongly linked to insulin resistance, raised blood pressure and fatty liver. It is a more honest measure than BMI, which cannot tell muscle from fat.
Waist circumference tends to rise through the forties and fifties even when body weight is stable, because lean mass falls and fat redistributes to the abdomen. Measure it monthly, same time of day, and watch the trend rather than any single reading.
2. Blood pressure
Blood pressure is the metric with the widest gap between how serious it is and how little it is felt. It usually has no symptoms at all until it has already done damage.
Aim for a clinic reading below 140/90 mmHg, with an ideal closer to 120/80. If your GP has asked you to monitor at home, take two readings a minute apart, morning and evening, for seven days and bring the average – not your best reading.
What nutrition can influence: potassium-rich foods, plenty of vegetables, modest salt, reduced alcohol and better sleep all move the number meaningfully over weeks. What it cannot do is replace medication that has already been prescribed.
3. Resting heart rate
A resting heart rate in the low sixties is unremarkable. A resting heart rate that has climbed ten beats over a year, in a man who has not changed his training, is worth noticing.
It rises gently with age as maximum heart rate falls and the heart’s electrical system slows. But a sharp or steady rise more often reflects poor sleep, alcohol, unmanaged stress, dehydration or an underlying illness than it does ageing itself.
Track it from a wearable or simply from your pulse on waking. The value is in the pattern, not the figure.
4. Fasting glucose and HbA1c
HbA1c is a single blood test that reflects average blood glucose over roughly the previous three months, and it is the one I would prioritise. In the UK it is reported in mmol/mol: below 42 is normal, 42 to 47 is the pre-diabetes range, and 48 or above indicates type 2 diabetes.
This matters because the drift toward type 2 diabetes is slow, largely symptomless and substantially reversible at the pre-diabetes stage. Muscle mass declines with age, and muscle is where most glucose is taken up, so the same diet that served a man at 30 can produce a very different HbA1c at 50.
Protein at every meal, resistance training twice a week, walking after eating and cutting back on liquid sugar are the levers with the strongest evidence behind them. If your HbA1c sits in the forties, this is exactly the sort of work a structured nutrition programme is built for.
5. Your lipid profile
Ask for the full breakdown, not just total cholesterol. Total cholesterol under 5 mmol/L is the usual NHS reference, with non-HDL cholesterol under 4 mmol/L, but the ratio and the triglyceride level tell you more about risk than the headline figure.
Raised triglycerides and low HDL are a pattern that tracks with abdominal fat, alcohol and refined carbohydrates rather than with dietary fat. Cutting back on those often does more for the profile than any single food swap.
6. Vitamin D
Vitamin D is the one supplement most UK men should simply be taking. Government guidance is 10 micrograms daily through autumn and winter, and year-round for anyone who covers up or spends most of the day indoors.
Low vitamin D is associated with fatigue, low mood, poorer bone density and reduced muscle function – all things easily mistaken for ‘just getting older’. Ask your GP for a test if you have symptoms rather than guessing at a dose.
7. Testosterone
Testosterone declines slowly with age, roughly one per cent a year from the thirties, and the decline is usually gentle enough to be irrelevant. It is the sharp drops that deserve attention.
Worth discussing with your GP if you have persistent low libido, loss of morning erections, unexplained loss of muscle or strength, or marked fatigue. Testing must be done in the morning, often twice, because levels swing through the day.
Body fat, sleep and chronic stress all suppress testosterone. So does severe energy restriction – which is one reason crash dieting in midlife tends to backfire.
8. PSA
Prostate-specific antigen is not a diagnosis; it is a conversation. The NHS does not screen for prostate cancer routinely, but from age 50 any man can ask his GP for a PSA test, and from 45 if he is Black or has a family history.
Know your own baseline and, more importantly, the direction of travel. A modest raise from a stable low baseline is more informative than an isolated number.
9. Sleep, and what happens in it
Six to eight hours, consistent, is the target. But the more useful question is whether you snore heavily, wake unrefreshed, or fall asleep in the afternoon.
Obstructive sleep apnoea becomes more common with age and with weight gain, and it quietly worsens blood pressure, glucose control and mood. If any of that sounds familiar, ask for a referral rather than buying another wearable.
Where nutrition fits
Every metric above sits downstream of the same handful of daily inputs: how much you move, how well you sleep, how much you drink, how much protein and fibre you eat, and how much of your food is highly processed. None of that is dramatic. All of it compounds.
What a nutritional therapist adds is not a longer list of things to worry about. It is a considered, evidence-based plan built around your actual numbers – your HbA1c, your waist, your lipids, your sleep – reviewed over weeks rather than guessed at. If you would like to talk through where you are and what is worth changing first, I would be glad to hear from you.
The takeaway
Track the waist, the blood pressure, the HbA1c and the sleep. Add vitamin D through the winter. Ask for the full lipid breakdown and, from 50, a conversation about PSA. Then measure again in three months.
Knowing your numbers is not anxiety. It is the opposite – it is the difference between guessing at your health and steering it.
