Health fascinates me. Not because of an innate need to understand how our bodies work but rather because of the extent to which we’re prepared to take risks with our health.

There are people who jump out of planes for fun, but the chances of dying from that are 0.008%. They know the risks of doing so, but make sure they do something about it by training for it and then strapping a parachute to their back. In contrast, there’s a 53% chance of one of us dying from a non-communicable disea...