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Healthmaxxing, more like exxhausting! 🫠 The latest trend to sweep the internet, incorporating ‘Looksmaxxing’ and other health and physical wellbeing goals to maximise your health, is likely doing you more harm than good.

The trend is encouraging everything from starving yourself to eating dangerous amounts of protein and fibre, ‘dryscooping’ where pre-workout is consumed dry without water, through to illegal steroid or drug use.

RBWH Dietitian Helen unpacks the toxxic trend all over our feeds, sharing her thoughts on some of the big impacts on our health to beware of, including:

1. Protein toxicity: Excess protein ends up being stored as fat. High protein foods are often highly processed too, with added sweeteners, emulsifiers and additives – which can have a negative impact on gut health!

2. Nutrient deficiency: Maxxing up one nutrient risks creating deficiencies in others. Nutrient deficiencies can result in skin conditions, brittle nails and lacklustre hair (which may be the opposite of Looksmaxxing!), and that’s just the start.

3. Steroids and hormonal ‘T-maxxing’ issues: T-maxxing is adding testosterone, but our bodies have finely tuned mechanisms to keep our hormones at optimal levels for health. Testosterone levels both too low and too high disrupt the balance and have consequences – that’s why our bodies work hard to keep our hormone levels stable. Too much testosterone, or T-maxxing can cause acne, mood swings, baldness and increased risk of high blood pressure and prostate cancer.

4. Liver failure from vitamin stacking: Supplement stacking and vitamin stacking uses combinations of supplements and vitamins that have never been tested to work together. The stacked nutrients may be competing for the same binding site in the gut, or interact with each other with a bad outcome, such as extra stress on the liver, kidneys and nutrient deficiencies. They are a biohack that seems like an easy fix, a way to bypass the things we all know are really helpful, but veg-maxxing is a much harder sell, right? 🥕🌽🥑 ...

Our very own Associate Professor Michael Steyn has received a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the General Division for significant service to anaesthesiology and peri-operative medicine, as well as health leadership.💫

Dr Michael, who grew up in Scotland and trained as a rural GP before he admits he `got lost in anaesthetics` says he`s always been passionate about supporting our regional and rural colleagues.

"As anaesthetists, we work throughout the hospital, not just in theatre, but in helping patients to cope with all areas of their healthcare journey," he said.

"I`ve been at RBWH since I moved to Australia, but I`ve always been involved in supporting people across the State and further afield."

In 2011, Michael had to temporarily hang up his scrubs as he was cared for as a patient, after learning he had bowel cancer.

"I was very ill - this hospital did all my imaging, and they did a great job," he said.

Michael recovered from cancer and returned to work to continue caring for patients as well as mentoring and training junior staff, which remains his current passion. ...