Future-proof your health in 2026 – with Dr Ayan Panja

If you’ve been feeling tired, struggling with joint pain, or battling digestive issues that no one seems able to explain, you’re not alone. Many of us experience stubborn symptoms that don’t add up to a clear diagnosis, leaving us frustrated and searching for answers. But what if the clues to better health are hiding in plain sight?

Dr Ayan Panja is an NHS GP with more than 25 years of clinical experience who discovered this firsthand when his own health mysteriously deteriorated at 40. Here’s what he learned about getting to the root cause of symptoms – and the surprisingly simple changes that actually work.

Dr Ayan Panja’s strategies to future-proof your health

Your daily habits hold the answers

Dr Panja has found that asking patients about their typical day is more revealing than any list of symptoms.

“That gives me a snapshot of their life,” he explains. “What time they wake up, what their sleep’s like, what their diet’s like, whether they’re drinking 10 coffees a day like I was when I was revising as a medical student.”

He recommends writing down eight areas of life on a piece of paper to discover patterns: diet, exercise, stress, sleep, genetics (family history), environment, sunlight (or vitamin D), and historic infections. When you map these factors honestly, patterns often emerge that explain why symptoms have appeared.

Think about how you eat

We spend a great deal of time thinking about what to eat, but Dr Panja says how we eat is just as important.

Take something as simple as sitting down to eat. If you’re standing – perhaps grabbing lunch between meetings or eating while cooking – your digestive system doesn’t have time to work properly, which can lead to bloating and heartburn.

Chewing slowly matters too, he adds. There’s an enzyme in saliva called salivary amylase that breaks down carbohydrates, but only if food spends enough time in your mouth.

“If it doesn’t, that process doesn’t happen and then suddenly you’ve got this bolus of food going down your gullet,” Dr Panja says.

How to make habits stick

Dr Panja’s own struggle with unhealthy snacking taught him that willpower isn’t the answer. As a GP, patients constantly brought him biscuits and chocolate as gifts.

“I just didn’t have any self-control,” he admits. “In my drawer, I’d just dump them there. And I would literally get through a whole packet in a day, 20 of them. I mean, it’s just terrible.”

The solution wasn’t trying harder – it was redesigning his environment using what he calls the IDEAL framework:

• I – Identify the problem (eating too many biscuits at work)
• D – Define what needs to change (stop keeping biscuits accessible in his desk)
• E – Engage by changing the environment (ask patients to leave gifts at reception, bring fruit from home instead)
• A – Activate by starting the new habit
• L – Look back and reward yourself for progress

“Looking back is patting yourself on the back, which sounds so childish and stupid,” he says. “It’s actually the most important part of behaviour change because that sort of reward to yourself makes you do it again and again.”

Don’t ignore your environment

“You can eat the cleanest diet in the world and run across the South Downs every day,” Dr Panja warns. “But if you’ve got something toxic going on in your environment, you won’t have good health.”

Whether it’s a bullying boss, a strained relationship, or chronic stress at work, environmental factors can cause fatigue and illness even when your physical health habits are perfect.

Check for common deficiencies

Dr Panja always checks vitamin B12 and vitamin D levels in tired patients. Even “low but normal” B12 needs optimising with supplements. From October to March in the UK, UVB rays aren’t strong enough to synthesise vitamin, making supplementation essential.

“Any of my patients who’ve been with me for a long time know that they’re programmed to buy vitamin D supplements in October and they have to take them to the end of March,” he says. For people with darker skin tones, year-round supplementation is necessary.