Jeremy Clarkson is back for another season of ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?’ and he's opening up about the changes he's made to his lifestyle to improve his health following a serious health scare. The beloved show host explained how he had to go on a very strict diet because one of the arteries that supplies blood to his heart was completely blocked. Such a blockage can only be fixed with surgeries and takes a massive toll on one's body.

In an interview with the Metro, he revealed that last October, he was hospitalized due to chest tightness, which led to the discovery of a completely blocked artery. When cases like this arise, the routine surgery includes unclogging the artery and placing a stent, a small, expandable tube that's inserted into a blood vessel or duct to keep it open. It makes sure it does not happen again. This was a big wake up call for him, and he decided to take his body and health more seriously, making healthier lifestyle changes. The doctors had also told him that he was just a few days away from worsening his condition, which could have meant long-lasting damage to him.

This is often the case for many people, most of us think that nothing bad would happen to us with a slight lifestyle changes. However, when it does, it may come to us like a big shock. It could also be the alarm that we needed to remind ourselves to take better care of our health. This is what happened with Clarkson, he consulted a dietician who advised him to eliminate processed foods from his diet. "If its got more than one ingredient in it, don’t eat it" is what he was told, and he took it very seriously.

What Lifestyle Changes Did He Have To Make?

He’s swapped previous snacks like bacon for healthier alternatives such as celery and carrots. Jeremy shared that he even received notifications from his phone about eating fewer sausages and taking fewer steps, which he jokingly attributed to sitting during the show's taping. However, he emphasized that he feels much better since implementing these dietary changes and credits the health scare with giving him the necessary motivation to prioritize his wellbeing. He compared this to quitting smoking after a bout of pneumonia, stating that these experiences provide a stark realization of the need for change.

Signs Of Artery Blockage You Should Look Out For

Chest pain can be scary because it has two meaning: a blocked artery (called angina) or a heart attack. Knowing the difference is important. Angina is a symptom of an underlying heart condition that causes chest pain or discomfort. It's usually caused by a partial blockage or spasm in the arteries that supply blood to the heart. It usually happens when you're active or stressed and goes away when you rest. But the pain that causes heart attack doesn't stop even when you're resting. Angina isn't a disease itself, rather a sign that could lead to serious heart diseases.

The pain can start in your chest and spread to your arm, shoulder, jaw, or back. Other signs of blocked arteries can be dizziness, feeling weak, a fast or fluttering heartbeat, feeling sick to your stomach, sweating, and trouble breathing. Knowing these signs can help you get help quickly.

Chest Pain (Angina) vs. Heart Attack

Chest pain can signal both a blocked artery, another word for which is angina or a heart attack. The key difference is that angina pain subsides with rest, while heart attack pain persists.

Angina Pain Characteristics

Angina, a symptom of conditions like coronary artery disease, often starts in the breastbone and can spread to the left arm, shoulder, jaw, or upper back.

Other Atherosclerosis Symptoms

Besides chest pain, other signs of blocked arteries include dizziness, weakness, heart palpitations (racing or fluttering heart), nausea, sweating, and shortness of breath.

A sedentary lifestyle is one of the biggest perpetrators of declining brain health. According to the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation there are many other factors like eating unhealthy processed foods, high LDL cholesterol, depression, traumatic brain injury, diabetes, smoking, high blood pressure etc., that can cause dementia. One of the best ways to prevent cognitive decline is said to be physical exercise. It reduces chronic inflammation, improves blood flow as well as releases proteins necessary for brain health. However, a new study shows physical activity is not the cure-all answer for decline in cognitive health.

The surprising thing was the link between how much time older adults spend sitting and their risk of getting Alzheimer's disease. What's even more interesting is that this risk seems to be higher even for people who make sure to get their daily exercise. The study found that those who sat for longer periods were more likely to experience a decline in their thinking skills and even showed signs of their brains shrinking over time, regardless of their exercise habits.

More Sedentary Time Means Faster Brain Decline

The study published in the Alzheimer’s & Dementia journal 2025, followed a group of adults aged 50 and older for an average of seven years. They used special watches to track exactly how much each person moved around during the day and how much time they spent being still. Over this period, they found a clear pattern: the more hours someone spent sitting down regularly, the worse their performance was on tests that measured their memory and how quickly they could process new information. This suggests that prolonged sitting has a negative impact on brain health over time.

Daily Exercise May Not Help Your Brain As Much

One of the key findings of this study is that simply exercising once a day might not be enough to completely protect your brain if you spend the rest of your time sitting. The lead researcher emphasized that while exercise is definitely good for overall health, minimizing the total time you spend sitting down each day could be even more important for reducing your chances of developing Alzheimer's disease later in life. This highlights the need to think about our activity levels throughout the entire day, not just during planned workouts.

The results of the study were quite revealing. They showed that even a large majority of the participants – about 87% – were meeting the recommended weekly amounts of physical activity set by health authorities. Despite getting enough exercise, these individuals still faced a higher risk of brain shrinkage and cognitive decline if they also spent a lot of time sitting down. This strongly suggests that being sedentary is an independent risk factor for Alzheimer's disease, meaning it can be harmful to the brain even if you are otherwise physically active.

You Need Less Sitting Time For Brain Health

Researchers emphasized the importance of breaking up long periods of sitting with movement. She stated that taking regular breaks to stand up and walk around throughout the day is likely a promising way to help prevent the kind of brain degeneration that can lead to cognitive decline and eventually Alzheimer's disease. This suggests that incorporating more short bursts of activity into our daily routines, rather than just focusing on a single workout, could be very beneficial for long-term brain health.

Pneumonia is one of the most common infections that was responsible for 14% of all deaths in children under the age of five, influencing the death of 740,180 children in 2019. It is a form of acute respiration infection that affects the lungs, making it difficult or painful to breathe. The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention statistics explain that the number of visits to the emergency department due to pneumonia happens to be 1.4 million people in 2021.

The symptoms and effects of pneumonia can be mild like coughing, shortness of breath to fever, chest pains nausea, vomiting or diarrhea. However, since the infection can be severe, doctors must treat them with urgency. To help them identify severe cases quicker, a new study published in the Lancet May 2025, reveals new models that can help doctors distinguish severe cases from the moderate ones.

Can This Help Lower The Risk Of Pneumonia

The researchers made an interesting discovery about common cold symptoms. They found that if a child has a runny nose and feels stuffed up, they are actually less likely to have a more serious type of pneumonia. In fact, the chances are lower by quite a bit! On the other hand, the study also pointed out some warning signs that suggest a child might have severe pneumonia.

The research showed that some common cold symptoms, like a runny nose and congestion, actually means a child is less likely (by 41%) to have a more serious form of pneumonia. On the other hand, certain signs like stomach pain, difficulty breathing, a fast heartbeat, and low oxygen levels in the blood point to a higher chance of severe pneumonia in children.

The study pointed out that doctors haven't had a good way to know for sure which of these children are in danger of getting much sicker. This new research is trying to fix that problem by giving doctors better tools to quickly identify the kids who need the most help right away.

Symptoms That Identified Mild from Severe Pneumonia

The researchers analyzed 2,200 children between the age bracket of 3 months and 14 years of age. The symptoms that were associated with increased risk of moderate or severe pneumonia

• Children with stomach pain had a significantly higher chance (52%) of having moderate or severe pneumonia.
• Kids who wouldn't drink fluids also faced a greater likelihood (57%) of a more serious pneumonia case.
• If a child had already been given antibiotics before coming to the emergency room, their risk of moderate or severe pneumonia was notably higher (64%).
• Labored breathing made the risk of moderate or severe pneumonia almost three times (2.8 times) as high.
• A faster than normal heartbeat also indicated a considerably increased risk (64%) of more serious pneumonia.

Pneumonia's Impact on Children's Health

Pneumonia is not just a minor illness; it's actually one of the most common infections that affects children all across the globe. It's also a very frequent reason why children in the United States end up needing to be admitted to the hospital. This shows just how important it is for doctors and scientists to really understand pneumonia and find the best ways to diagnose it, treat it, and even predict how serious it might become for each child who gets it.

Researchers pointed out that said that while most kids who get pneumonia will thankfully have a milder form of the illness, there's a small group, about 5 out of every 100 children, who will become very sick and might develop serious health problems. It's absolutely crucial for doctors to be able to spot these children very early on. This way, they can start strong and fast treatments to stop their condition from getting worse and potentially causing long-term issues.

Impact of This Study On Pneumonia Care

Being able to tell how severe a child's pneumonia will be doesn't just help the very sick kids. It can also help the kids who are likely to have a milder illness. If doctors can confidently say that a child's pneumonia is not serious, they can avoid doing extra medical tests that might not be needed. They can also prevent the child from having to stay in the hospital if it's not really necessary, which can be a big relief for both the child and their family.

With the modern medicine, timely access to specialized care often makes the difference between life and death. For patients with heart failure, this reality has never been more true but a troubling new study indicates that roughly 40% of individuals with heart failure do not see a cardiologist even once per year despite strong evidence that even one yearly visit would greatly enhance survival.

Published in the European Heart Journal and delivered at the Heart Failure Congress 2025, the research led by Dr. Guillaume Baudry and Professor Nicolas Girerd from the Clinical Investigation Centre at Nancy University Hospital in France indicates that annual cardiology follow-ups are linked to a 24% lower risk of mortality. The results give rise to immediate questions regarding discrepancies in access to specialist care and how health systems everywhere can improve support for heart failure patients.

Heart failure ensues when the heart becomes incapable of circulating blood, usually a result of ailments like coronary artery disease, hypertension, or past heart attacks. Although irreversible in a majority of instances, heart failure can be treated for many decades with the proper medications, lifestyle modifications, and follow-up visits. Cardiologists have the key role in providing this expert care.

While the previous research took its data from a handful of middle-class medical centers, the new study, based on medical records of 655,919 heart failure patients in France, discovered that almost two in five patients saw no cardiologist whatsoever within a 12-month window. And such minimal contact has dire consequences. In accordance with the scientists, for every 11–16 patients who did visit a cardiologist on at least an annual basis, one life could be saved.

"Ever since we understood the importance of specialist care for cancer, we've also known that heart failure needs specialist attention," said Dr. Baudry. "Our study offers proof that even clinically stable patients can gain benefit from regular care by a cardiologist."

How Often Should You Visit a Cardiologist?

To maximize care delivery, the research stratified patients according to two straightforward but strongly predictive factors: recent hospitalization for heart failure and diuretic use (a common set of medications used to counteract fluid accumulation). These factors were used to determine which patients required more frequent follow-ups with specialists.

Patients with no recent hospitalization and no diuretic use were improved by at least one visit a year, cutting their risk of death from 13% to 6.7%.

Those who had not been recently hospitalized but were on diuretics required two to three visits yearly, reducing their risk from 21.3% to 11.9%.

Those hospitalized in the past five years (but not the recent year) also needed two to three visits to reduce risk from 24.8% to 12.9%.

The most at-risk group—those hospitalized in the previous year—benefited most from quarterly visits, lowering death rates from 34.3% to 18.2%.

Importantly, these recommendations are based on existing resource constraints within national healthcare systems, making them practical and scalable globally.

The study also identified significant differences in access to seeing a cardiologist. Women, older patients, and patients with other chronic conditions like diabetes or pulmonary disease were less likely to be referred for cardiology treatment. Indeed, 33.8% of women did not visit a cardiologist in a year, versus 27.9% of men. Women were also less likely to take drugs like RAS inhibitors, which are routine in heart failure treatment.

In spite of these differences, women actually fared better overall in mortality and hospitalization rates—an intriguing and not yet fully explained result that merits further study.

Professor Nicolas Girerd stressed the necessity of systematic reform: "Referral to a cardiologist should be as routine in heart failure as it is in cancer care. Our study demonstrates that two simple markers recent hospitalization and treatment with diuretics—can inform these decisions without the need for expensive diagnostic machinery."

This big, population-based French study is a wake-up call, not only for European healthcare, but for health systems in general. In most nations, primary care doctors are overworked, and patients with complicated diseases such as heart failure might not get the specialist care they require.

In a supporting editorial, Professor Lars Lund of Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm cautioned, "What good is 50 years of discovery and innovation in heart failure treatment if patients aren't accessing that care?" He further said that systemic initiatives are urgently required to include cardiology follow-up in the standard care pathways.

Although this was an observational study and cannot establish direct causality, the scale and robustness of the findings are a powerful argument for change. The researchers plan now to conduct an interventional clinical trial to examine the effect of organized cardiologist follow-up on patient outcomes. They also want to investigate the problem in countries with varying models of healthcare in order to determine world applicability.

Hidden Cost of Skipping Cardiology Visits

Heart failure doesn’t always arrive with drama — no sudden collapse, no flashing lights. Instead, it often unfolds quietly, with fatigue, shortness of breath, or swelling easily dismissed as aging or stress. But beneath that silence lies a ticking time bomb. The latest study from France highlights a shocking truth: failing to see a cardiologist even once a year could be a matter of life and death. This isn't about access to the latest technology or expensive tests, it's about presence.

The absence of a specialist in a patient’s journey with heart failure can mean the absence of life-saving medication adjustments, early warning signs going unnoticed, and critical therapy not being initiated. The data is sobering — skipping that one visit could mean doubling the risk of death.

Signs That Could Save Lives

One of the most powerful insights from the study is its identification of two simple, scalable criteria—recent hospitalization and diuretic use that can predict which heart failure patients are at highest risk. This is revolutionary in its simplicity. It doesn’t require advanced imaging, genomic testing, or expensive algorithms.