The Habit Healers
The Habit Healers Podcast, hosted by Dr. Laurie Marbas, explores how small habit changes can lead to significant health transformations. Each episode features science-backed strategies and real-world tools to help listeners break free from chronic health issues, rewire their habits, and achieve lasting healing. The podcast emphasizes designing a lifestyle that makes vibrant health effortless, moving beyond willpower to create sustainable change.
Episodes
What If the Fix for Your Back, Your Knees, and Your Balance Is the Muscle You're Sitting On?
Could weak glutes be the hidden reason behind your low back pain, aching knees, and shaky balance? If you sit most of the day, your glute muscles may have quietly stopped firing, a problem sometimes called dead butt syndrome or gluteal amnesia, and the effects reach a lot further than a flat backside.In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, and I want to walk you throug
What If Fourteen Risk Factors Explained Nearly Half of All Dementia, and You Could Change Every One?
Nearly half of all dementia cases are linked to risk factors you can actually do something about, and most of them have nothing to do with your genes. In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I break down the 14 modifiable risk factors for dementia identified by the 2024 Lancet Commission, and exactly what they mean for protecting your brain.I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, a board-certified lifestyle
Your Body Has a Built-In Blood Sugar Sponge. It's in Your Calf.
Can you lower your blood sugar while sitting? It turns out there’s a small muscle in your calf that may let you do exactly that, and almost no one has heard of it. In this episode I break down the soleus push-up, a seated movement that helped blunt after-meal blood sugar spikes by up to 52 percent in early research.Most of us sit for ten or more hours a day, and we’ve all been told the fix is to s
There Are Only Three Steps Between You and a Stronger Body. Most People Skip the Third.
Why does some people’s strength training transform their body while yours just leaves you sore? If you’ve ever wondered why your workouts aren’t working, this episode is for you. I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, and today on The Habit Healers Podcast I’m using one of the oldest crafts on earth, blacksmithing, to explain exactly how your body builds muscle, energy, and strength at any age.The science of buil
This Type of Inflammation Slows Aging. The Other Type Accelerates It.
Chronic inflammation is one of the biggest hidden drivers of aging, heart disease, and metabolic decline, and most of us have no idea where we stand. In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I’m walking you through “inflammaging,” the slow, silent rise in inflammation that accumulates as we age, using a surprising parallel from nature that finally makes the whole process click.I’m Dr. Laurie
What If Nine Two-Minute Habits Gave You a 50% Survival Advantage?
Loneliness is now considered a health risk on the level of smoking, and most of us have no idea how much modern life has quietly stripped human connection out of our days. In this episode, I break down what social disconnection actually does to your body, and the nine small habits that can rebuild it.We’ve engineered face-to-face contact out of almost everything: banking, groceries, work. Each cha
Your Brain Has a Volume Knob for Food Noise. Here's How to Turn It Down.
If your brain won’t stop thinking about food, even when you’re not hungry, you’re experiencing something researchers now call food noise. In this episode, I explain what food noise actually is, why GLP-1 medications like Ozempic and Mounjaro quiet it, and how to turn down the volume naturally, with or without medication.For years, constant thoughts about food got blamed on willpower and poor self-
What If the First Sign of Alzheimer's Isn't Forgetting?
Your sense of smell may be one of the earliest warning signs for brain health and cognitive decline, and almost no one is paying attention to it. In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I explain why smell training could be one of the simplest things you do for your brain.I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, and in this episode I walk you through the surprising science connecting your nose to your memory.
Can a Muffin Really Be Good for Your Blood Sugar, Your Waistline, Your Wallet, and Your Taste Buds?
I have a confession. When someone describes a baked good as “healthy,” my expectations drop. I start picturing dense, dry things that taste like obligation. The kind of food you eat because you should, not because you actually want to.This week’s live cooking session with Chef Martin Oswald changed that. He walked the audience through a muffin recipe where every ingredient pulls double duty, and I
What Are the Atrial Fibrillation Triggers Hiding in a Healthy Lifestyle?
Why are so many healthy, active women being diagnosed with atrial fibrillation? If you or someone you love recently got an AFib diagnosis and can’t understand why, this episode is for you.In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I answer a letter from a longtime reader: three active women in their seventies, all diagnosed with afib in the same year, all already eating well and staying active.
The 4-Part Food Plan That Dropped Her Cholesterol 29 Points
After 50 years of eating plant-based, my guest, Victoria Moran, was already doing almost everything right, and her cholesterol still had room to drop. Then she added four specific things to her plate, and her total cholesterol fell from 156 to 127. No statin.In my practice, I hear the same frustration constantly: "I eat clean, so why are my numbers stuck?" Victoria's story shows that the Portfolio
What Are the 8 Tests Your Doctor Overlooks That Predict More About Your Health Than Your Standard Labs?
Your doctor said your bloodwork looks normal. But normal only describes what they actually tested. In this episode I walk you through eight tests your annual physical almost never includes, four blood markers and four at-home assessments, that reveal not just where your health stands but where it’s heading.We start with the blood tests your standard panel leaves off. I explain why fasting insulin
What If the Best Workout You Could Do Took Less Than Five Minutes and Happened in Your Kitchen?
What if you could stay strong, steady, and independent as you age without ever setting foot in a gym? In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I break down the science of NEAT, non-exercise activity thermogenesis, and exercise snacking, and how tiny bursts of movement woven into your day can lower your risk of early death as much as a structured workout.I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, and one of the m
What If Your Morning Coffee Is Spiking Your Blood Sugar?
Your morning blood sugar might be climbing before you even get out of bed, and the order you do things next can either calm it down or send it higher. In this episode I walk you through the morning blood sugar stack, a simple way to rearrange the morning you already have.If you’ve ever wondered why your blood sugar runs high in the morning, the answer starts with something called the dawn phenomen
Is Your Thyroid Medication Enough? A Physician With Hashimoto’s Explains What’s Missing.
Can you lower thyroid antibodies naturally, or is Hashimoto’s thyroiditis just something you have to live with? After thirty years with this disease, here’s what I’ve learned: the answer lives in an unexpected place, a coral reef.In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, and I’m sharing the framework that finally made sense of my own diagnosis, and later my son’s. Hashim
Are You Training for the Gym or for Your Actual Life?
I want you to try something right now. Sit down in a chair. Now stand back up. Did your hands go to your thighs to push yourself up? Did you lean forward and rock a little to build momentum?If so, you are not alone. And you just identified exactly why this week’s Substack Live with my friend Maxime Sigouin matters so much.Maxime has been in the fitness space for over a decade. He has helped more t
What’s the Restaurant Secret Nobody Told Home Cooks?
I’ve been cooking at home long enough to know the feeling. You open the fridge at five-thirty, stare at the contents, and realize you’re about to spend the next 45 minutes assembling a meal from scratch, just like you did last night, and the night before that.Meanwhile, a restaurant kitchen is cranking out 200 plates in a single evening across 30 different dishes, and every single one tastes not j
Is Your Workout Helping or Hurting You? The One-Sentence Test That Tells You.
How hard should you actually be exercising? It turns out your own voice can tell you. In this episode I break down the talk test, a simple and free way to find your ideal moderate-intensity exercise zone, sometimes called Zone 2, with no equipment required.I walk you through the fascinating research showing that the moment your speech shifts from comfortable to effortful lines up almost exactly wi
What If Your Thermostat Is Controlling Your Blood Sugar?
What if your bedroom thermostat is the most underused metabolic tool in your house? In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I unpack what the research actually shows about brown adipose tissue, insulin sensitivity, and how a small shift in bedroom temperature at night can change your blood sugar, your energy, and how your body handles food the next day.I walk you through a landmark four-mont
Why Do So Many Heart Attacks Happen to People With “Normal” Cholesterol?
Your cholesterol panel can look completely normal and still miss the cardiovascular risk that lands people in the hospital. Almost half of heart attack patients have an LDL under 100. In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I walk you through the five markers that reveal what your standard lipid panel was never designed to see.I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, a board-certified lifestyle medicine physi
Why Did It Take 90 Years to Figure Out That PCOS Has Almost Nothing to Do With Your Ovaries?
PCOS just got an official new name, and if you were diagnosed back in your twenties or thirties, you need to hear what changed. After a global consensus process involving 56 medical and patient organizations, polycystic ovary syndrome has been renamed polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome, or PMOS. The new name points to where the real engine of this condition has been hiding all along.In this
10 Habits That Make Your Brain Stop Asking for More Food
Your body already makes GLP-1, the same hormone behind Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro. The question is whether your meals are actually triggering it. In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I walk you through ten science-backed habits that quiet food noise, calm cravings, and tune your natural satiety signals.If you have ever eaten what felt like a perfectly reasonable dinner and found yourse
If Your Hips Could Talk, They'd Beg for This 5-Minute Protocol
Most of us assume hip stiffness is just part of getting older. The research tells a very different story. In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I’m walking through why your tight hips have far less to do with aging than you think, and why the fix is closer than you’ve been led to believe.I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, and in this conversation I unpack the largest study ever conducted on joint-spec
What If You Never Had to "Cook" Again?
If cooking feels like a bigger project than you have energy for at 7 p.m. on a Tuesday, this episode is for you. I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, and today on The Habit Healers Podcast, I’m walking through why the people with the highest cooking standards actually cook the least, and how a simple five-minute bowl can be one of the most metabolically sound meals you eat all week.For years, the message has be
Anthocyanins. Phytoestrogens. Postbiotics. You've Read All These Words. Do You Know What Any of Them Mean?
If you’ve ever felt lost reading a nutrition label or a health headline, full of words like polyphenol, phytochemical, carotenoid, prebiotic, and postbiotic, this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast is for you. I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, and today I’m sharing the visual mnemonics methodology I developed in medical school to make complex science stick, and I’m applying it to the most confusing vocabul
What’s Your Heart’s GPA?
What if your entire cardiovascular health could be captured in a single score from 0 to 100? In this episode, I walk you through Life’s Essential 8, the American Heart Association’s heart health score, and why the average American adult lands at just 65, the equivalent of a D+.I see it constantly in my practice. Someone walks in managing one number, their cholesterol, their blood pressure, their b
What Happens Inside Your Body Two Hours After You Eat a Beet?
Chef Martin Oswald was in his Austrian kitchen today toasting mustard seeds in a dry pan while I sat in our RV in Bend, Oregon, where we’ve parked for the summer because Las Vegas in June is not for the faint of heart. He was making a beet tartare and a high-nitrate summer salad, and at some point the conversation drifted from cooking into chemistry, which is what tends to happen when you put a ch
Why Are the Fast Eaters Three Times More Likely to Carry Belly Fat?
If you finish every meal feeling overstuffed and wondering why, the problem may not be willpower. It may be speed. Eating too fast quietly outruns your body’s own fullness signals, and slowing down can change how much you eat without any dieting at all.In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, and I walk you through the science of eating speed and your satiety hormones,
Can a Pill Make an Aging Runner Faster?
Can an NMN supplement really make you run faster after menopause? I started taking NMN and resveratrol after hearing Harvard scientist David Sinclair tell a story on a longevity podcast, and what happened to my running data did not fit anything I’d expect as a physician.In this episode, I share my own timeline honestly: a personal record at the Boston half-marathon, then menopause, a broken ankle,
Why Your Weight Loss Drug Stopped Working and What to Do About It
GLP-1 weight loss medications are evolving faster than most people can track, and a lot of what you’ve heard is already out of date. In this episode I give you the updated map: how Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, Zepbound, and the new triple agonist retatrutide actually differ, and why it matters for your results.Here’s what I want you to know. These drugs aren’t a willpower fix, they’re correcting the
The 5-Habit Prescription Nobody Gave You for the Syndrome Almost Everybody Has
What if your heart, your kidneys, and your blood sugar were never separate problems at all? In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I break down cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic syndrome, or CKM syndrome, the framework that connects insulin resistance, high blood pressure, kidney health, and heart disease into one picture, and why most adults are already affected without knowing it.I’m Dr. La
Why Do More Heart Attacks Happen Before Breakfast Than at Any Other Time of Day?
Your blood pressure spikes every single morning, and a standard doctor’s visit can miss it completely. That morning blood pressure surge is when heart attacks and strokes cluster most, yet most people never know theirs is dangerously high because office readings look fine by mid-morning.In this episode, I explain why high blood pressure in the morning is so commonly overlooked, and what researcher
What If Your Insomnia Starts at Sunrise?
If you’re tired but can’t sleep, or you fall asleep fine and still wake up exhausted, the problem may not be your bedtime at all. In this episode I walk you through why better sleep actually starts in the morning, and a simple four-part protocol to reset your circadian rhythm from both ends of the day.Most sleep advice obsesses over the hour before bed, but the research points somewhere most peopl
How Smart Is Your Smartwatch, Really?
Is your smartwatch actually accurate? Your Apple Watch, Garmin, Fitbit, Oura Ring, or Whoop band tracks up to fourteen health numbers, but it never tells you which ones come from a real measurement and which ones are an algorithm’s best guess. In this episode, I break down exactly which wearable health metrics you can trust and which ones to ignore.Here’s what I want you to know. The most famous f
Chef Martin Oswald flips the classic Vietnamese summer roll into a nutrient-packed meal, and shows us three ways to make it work for every body
I’m writing this from Bend, Oregon, where we parked our RV for the start of a summer road trip. Chef Martin Oswald is across the Atlantic, where Europe has been baking in early summer heat. And that’s how we ended up here, making Vietnamese summer rolls on a Wednesday morning with viewers from all over the world watching us fumble through German vocabulary and debate the correct pronunciation of “
The Wrinkle Cause That Has Nothing to Do With the Sun
What if the biggest driver of skin aging isn’t sun or genetics, but your blood sugar? In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I’ll show you how to boost collagen naturally and rebuild your skin from the inside, no expensive serums or collagen supplements required.Here’s something I find most people have never heard. A chemical process called glycation, the same reaction that browns a steak,
Seven Unusual Sleep Habits You’ve Probably Never Tried
If you’ve tried every sleep tip on the internet and you still wake up at 3 a.m. or drag through your afternoons, the problem probably isn’t your bedroom. It’s everything you’re doing during the day. I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, and on this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I walk you through seven research-backed sleep habits, one for each day of the week, that build better sleep hours before you ev
Seven Unusual Sleep Habits You’ve Probably Never Tried
What if better sleep has nothing to do with your bedroom? In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I’ll show you how to sleep better naturally by building a full-day sleep system, no supplements, no apps, no expensive gadgets required.Here’s the truth I share with my patients all the time: if you’ve struggled with sleep for years, your sense of “normal” has quietly drifted. You’ve adjusted to
What Happens Between "Normal" and Prediabetic That Nobody Warns You About
Your fasting glucose is normal, so why is your A1c going up? If that question has ever left you confused, this episode is for you. I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, and on The Habit Healers Podcast I explain why a single morning blood draw can miss the most important window in your metabolic health: the hours after you eat.We start with a surprising idea borrowed from engineering, a 1949 mathematical proof a
The Research Shows One Object Is the Most Efficient Tool to Train Grip, Power, and Balance at Once.
Why does grip strength predict how long you’ll live better than your blood pressure does? In this episode, I dig into the science of muscle power, grip strength, and longevity, and why the strength that keeps you independent as you age is not the kind you build with slow, heavy lifting.Most of us assume that staying strong is about how much we can lift. But here’s the part most people miss: as we
What’s Your Heart’s GPA?
What’s your heart’s GPA? The American Heart Association built a cardiovascular health score called Life’s Essential 8, and the average American adult is pulling a D+. In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I walk you through the eight measures that determine your heart health, why a single composite score is more useful than any one lab value, and how to figure out which habit to change fir
Your Fat Cells Just Walked Off the Job. Here's Who Got Left Holding the Bag.
Can someone at 220 pounds be metabolically healthier than someone at 155? In this episode, I explain why the real driver of type 2 diabetes and insulin resistance isn’t how much fat you carry, but whether you’ve exceeded your own personal fat storage capacity.I walk you through what I call the garage model of metabolic health: the idea that your fat tissue has a fixed number of parking spaces, and
What If Your Fatigue, Your Belly Fat, and Your Brain Fog All Have the Same Root Cause?
Your blood sugar looks normal, your HbA1c is fine, and your doctor says you’re healthy. So why are you exhausted by 2pm, carrying weight around your middle that won’t budge, and walking into rooms forgetting why? In this episode, I explain why standard blood work misses insulin resistance, the upstream driver behind so many of the symptoms people are told to ignore.I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, and on Th
What Does It Mean When Your Fasting Glucose Is "Normal" but Your A1c Keeps Climbing?
Your fasting glucose is normal, but your A1c keeps climbing, and no one can tell you why. In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I’m walking you through exactly what that gap means, why post-meal blood sugar spikes are the hidden driver of rising A1c in most people, and the nine habits that target the hours your fasting blood draw never sees.I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, a board-certified lifestyl
Why Are the Fast Eaters Three Times More Likely to Carry Belly Fat?
Fast eaters are more than three times as likely to carry belly fat, even when they’re eating the same food as slower eaters. In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I walk you through the science of why eating speed quietly shapes weight, blood sugar, and metabolic health, and what to do about it.We dig into the gut hormones that tell your brain you’re full, GLP-1, CCK, and PYY, and why they
What If Your Blender Could Replace Every Bottled Sauce in Your Fridge?
When Tim Gannon walked into the kitchen at the Pyramid Bistro in Aspen, Chef Martin Oswald figured he was a salesperson. Martin let him stand there for ten minutes. Gannon didn’t seem to mind. When Martin finally acknowledged him, Gannon rattled off every flavor on the menu that night, sage and allspice and the rest, with the precision of someone who had spent his life thinking about food at this
What Are the 8 Tests Your Doctor Overlooks That Predict More About Your Health Than Your Standard Labs?
What if your annual physical is missing the tests that matter most? Most standard lab panels were built to catch disease, not to tell you where your health is heading. On this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I’m walking you through eight blind spots in the typical yearly checkup, four blood markers your doctor can add to your next requisition, and four simple physical assessments you can do
How Many of These 14 Sleep Myths Do You Still Believe?
Most of what you’ve been told about sleep is wrong, and the science has shifted in ways your doctor probably hasn’t caught up on yet. In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I’m walking you through fourteen of the most common sleep myths, from the eight-hour rule to weekend catch-up sleep, and showing you what the latest research actually says.Some of these will surprise you. Sleep regularit
Can a Roasted Onion Replace the Sugar in Your Cooking?
Every cuisine on the planet figured out the same trick. Asian stir-fries pair tamarind with palm sugar. Moroccan tagines fold dried apricots into braised lamb. German cooks set sauerkraut next to pork. The contrast of sweet and sour is one of cooking’s oldest and most universal principles, and it exists because without it, flavor stays flat.Most of us understand this instinctively when it comes to
Your Body Has a Built-In Blood Sugar Sponge. It's in Your Calf.
What if the simplest way to lower your blood sugar after meals was a tiny seated movement you can do at your desk? In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, and I’m walking you through the science of the soleus push-up, a research-backed exercise that targets a deep calf muscle uniquely built to pull glucose straight out of your bloodstream while you sit.We sit for ten o
Are You Chasing a Finish Line That Keeps Moving?
I’ll be honest with you. I schedule these live conversations with Jud Brewer MD PhD partly so I can get free therapy. He’s a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at Brown University, and I figure if we’re going to have a conversation about perfectionism, I might as well get something out of it too.So here’s my problem. My Substack is ranked number five in health and wellness. I started it about sixteen
What If Fourteen Risk Factors Explained Nearly Half of All Dementia, and You Could Change Every One?
Most people assume dementia is genetic, but the latest research tells a different story. In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I walk you through the 2024 Lancet Commission’s findings that 45% of dementia cases worldwide are linked to 14 modifiable risk factors, and what that actually means for the choices you make every day.I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, a board-certified lifestyle medicine physi
Can You Really Cook a Dish That Makes You Forget About Salt?
There are 1.4 billion people on this planet dealing with hypertension. That number is so large it stops meaning anything. So let me bring it closer. Somewhere in your life, probably within arm’s reach, is a person whose blood pressure is slowly, silently beating up their heart, their kidneys, and their brain. And the most common medical advice they will receive is some version of “cut back on sodi
The Bathroom Habit That May Be Raising Your Blood Pressure
Is your mouthwash raising your blood pressure? In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I’m breaking down nitric oxide, the Nobel Prize-winning molecule your body makes in real time to regulate blood pressure, blood flow, erectile function, brain health, and how your muscles handle blood sugar.Most of us have never heard of it, and yet nitric oxide is one of the single most important signalin
Did Your Brain Accidentally Train Itself to Be Anxious?
Anxiety isn’t a willpower problem. It’s a habit loop your brain learned, and the thing that actually breaks it is curiosity.In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I walk you through the neuroscience of why chronic worry feels impossible to stop, and why the usual advice of “just push through” or “think positive” tends to fail at the exact moment you need it most. Drawing on the research of
What If You’ve Been Peeling Away the Best Part of Your Asparagus?
Subscribe to Chef Martin Oswald’s Healing Kitchen Substack. Right now, across Austria, something is happening that most Americans have never seen. Farmers are pulling thick white asparagus spears out of mounded soil, each one grown entirely in the dark, never touched by sunlight, never given the chance to produce chlorophyll. They are as fat as a thumb and pale as bone. And for the next few weeks,
If Your Labs Are Creeping, Read This Before Your Next Prescription
Can the same plate of food lower your blood sugar, reduce your cholesterol, and bring down your blood pressure? If your doctor has flagged rising glucose, elevated LDL, and borderline blood pressure, you might be dealing with one problem showing up in three places: insulin resistance.On this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, and I’m walking you through the cardiometaboli
What Can Three Strangers Do for Your Health?
Social isolation raises your risk of dying from any cause by 32%, putting loneliness in the same mortality category as smoking. But the daily habit that fights social disconnection is far smaller than you think. In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I walk you through the research behind what I call the three-stranger habit, and why a few seconds of real human connection each day could be
What If Your Doctor Is Wrong About Aging?
In this episode, I take a closer look at something most of us accept without question. I feel more tired, I recover more slowly, my numbers start to shift—and I’m told, “that’s just aging.” But what if that explanation is missing the most important part?I break down the science that’s changing how we understand aging entirely. Not as a single, inevitable decline—but as a set of specific biological
What If Ten Habits Could Slow Every Way Your Body Ages?
Most people trying to do something about aging are working from an incomplete picture. They hear about a supplement worth trying, or a fasting protocol, or a stress management app, and they keep adding items to a list with no clear organizing logic. What they rarely hear is which specific biological changes are happening inside their body right now, and which daily actions actually affect them.In
What If the Secret to Weight Loss Was Already in Your Pantry?
Every Wednesday at 10 AM we go live. Join next week’s Substack Live with Chef Martin Oswald here. Half a cup of red lentils costs about thirty cents. That’s what Chef Martin Oswald held up on our live today before turning it into something I’d never seen before, a homemade lentil tofu.He didn’t need any special equipment or hard-to-find ingredients. Just lentils, water, a blender, and a stockpot.M
What If the Most Important Thing About Your Meal Isn’t What You Eat, But How You Eat It?
In this episode, I explore a small shift that completely changed how I think about meals. Same plate. Same food. Same calories. But depending on what I eat first, my body responds in a completely different way.I walk through the science behind why starting with protein and fiber—like vegetables, beans, or lentils—can significantly reduce blood sugar spikes, sometimes to a degree that rivals medica
What If the Secret to Better Cooking Has Nothing to Do With Recipes?
Most of us learned to cook the same way. Find a recipe. Follow the steps. Hope it turns out. And when it does, we make it again. And again. Until we have maybe six or seven dishes in rotation and a lingering suspicion that real cooks know something we don’t.They do. But it’s not what you think.Chef Martin Oswald trained under Wolfgang Puck. He’s cooked in restaurants where a single plate costs mor
Who Designed Your Craving? (Hint: It Wasn’t You)
In this episode, I take a hard look at a question most of us have asked ourselves at some point—and I challenge the answer we’ve been given. What if it’s not about willpower at all? What if the food I’m reaching for was engineered, very deliberately, to override the systems in my body that are supposed to tell me when to stop?I walk through the science behind how modern food is designed to drive o
Most Habits Are Dead on Arrival. Here’s How to Tell Before You Start.
Ever have that Sunday night feeling where you decide this is the week everything changes? You’re going to meditate, quit sugar, and hit the pavement at 5 AM. Then Wednesday hits, the wheels fall off, and by Friday, you’re back where you started, blaming your lack of willpower.But what if I told you the problem isn’t you? It’s the habit you chose.In this episode, I’m breaking down The Selection Pro
What If Your Dessert Was the Healthiest Thing You Ate All Day?
Most of us treat dessert like a transaction. You get the pleasure, you pay the metabolic price. Maybe you skip it entirely, white-knuckling your way past the freezer at 9 PM. Maybe you give in and spend the next hour renegotiating with yourself about what that means.But what if the math didn’t work that way? What if you could build a dessert that actually brought fiber, protein, omega-3s, and poly
What If the Most Powerful Thing in Your Kitchen Is Something You Already Drink?
In this episode, I explore an idea that completely changed how I think about my daily routine: the “tea medicinal cabinet.” It’s not about adding anything complicated—it’s about being more intentional with something I’m probably already doing… making a cup of tea.I walk through six teas that actually earn their place based on the science. From green tea’s role in cognitive health and metabolism, t
What If the Cheapest Supplement in the Gym Is Actually Brain Medicine?
In 1994, doctors scanned a boy’s brain and found zero creatine inside it. Not low. Completely absent. He had severe intellectual disability, seizures, and almost no language. That case should have changed how medicine thinks about the $0.12/day powder sitting on every gym shelf. It didn’t. Not for decades.In this episode, Dr. Laurie Marbas breaks down the science connecting creatine to your brain,
What If Your 30 Plants a Week Are the Wrong 30?
Every week, Chef Martin Oswald and I go live on Substack to dig into one concept and build a meal around it. This week, Martin did something I hadn’t seen before. He set out five items on his counter. A pumpkin, a jar of miso, a handful of blueberries, a potato, and a single leek. Then he asked a question that reframed how I think about plant diversity.You’ve heard the recommendation. Eat 30 diffe
Can You Catch Anxiety From Your Phone?
In 2018, researchers at MIT published a study in Science that tracked how different types of information move through social media. They found that false and emotionally charged content spread roughly five times faster than accurate information.That number came up in my monthly conversation with Dr. Jud Brewer, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist who specializes in anxiety and habit change. Jud has
Why the Two-Pound Phone Was Better for Your Brain
In 1983, your cell phone weighed two pounds, cost four thousand dollars, and could only make calls.And strangely enough… it may have been better for your brain.In this episode, I explore how we traded a heavy, inconvenient tool for a featherlight slot machine — and why that design shift quietly rewired our attention, our posture, our sleep, and our relationships.I explain the neuroscience behind d
Stop Buying Organic on the Wrong Foods
Chef Martin Oswald and I filmed this live from two different continents (he was in Austria, I was in the U.S.) and we spent over an hour fighting technical issues before we actually got the thing to work. So if you watched live and stuck around through all of that, thank you. Genuinely.Once we got going, we covered three things. The dirty dozen. The clean 15. And then a conversation Martin wanted
Why Can a 150-Pound Man Get Diabetes When a 300-Pound Man Does Not?
Why can a 150-pound man develop Type 2 diabetes… while a 300-pound man does not?For decades, we were told a simple story: gain weight, get sick. Stay thin, stay safe. But that story falls apart the moment you look at real patients.In this episode, I walk you through the concept that changed how we understand diabetes: the Personal Fat Threshold.I explain why the issue isn’t how much fat you carry
Is Your Brain Getting Fed? The Micronutrients Most of Us Are Missing
Chris Miller MD and I went deep on this one. We sat down for a Friday live and covered something that gets overlooked in the constant noise about macronutrients, protein targets, and which diet trend deserves your attention this week. We talked about the micronutrients that actually keep your brain and body running, the ones most people never test for, and what happens when they quietly fall short
What If the Real Reason You Can’t Lose Weight Is Hiding in Your Sauce?
In this week’s live session, Chef Martin Oswald pulled back the curtain on something most people never think about: calorie stacking. It’s the way traditional cooking piles fat on top of fat, layer by layer, from the oil you sauté in to the cream in the sauce to the cheese on the finish. By the time a plate of pasta or a restaurant entrée reaches your table, those invisible layers can easily add u
What Happens When You Stretch for 3 Minutes Every Morning for 2 Weeks
What happens if you stretch for just three minutes every morning for two weeks?Not an hour.Not a hot yoga class.Not a heroic “new year, new me” overhaul.Three minutes.In this week’s Habit Healers Live Lab, I share what actually changed in my own hip after seven days of micro-dosing mobility — and why biology responds to consistency far more than intensity.We treat stiffness like a project that nee
Understanding Dementia: Early Signs, Prevention, and Treatment
In this episode of "Learn My Lesson," I had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Jake Goodman, a psychiatrist and the writer behind the "Mental Health Movement" Substack. Dr. Goodman shared his inspiring journey into medicine, detailing his early aspirations, the challenges he faced getting into medical school, and his eventual specialization in psychiatry. He also discussed his personal experience w
What Does “Whole Person Medicine” Actually Look Like?
I get referred patients regularly because I practice what people call “holistic medicine.” And the story is almost always the same: they’ve been through conventional medicine, they keep getting more prescriptions, their numbers may look fine on paper, but they don’t feel any better. Sometimes they feel worse. There’s a lack of vitality that nobody seems to be addressing, and nobody is asking why.T
What If You’ve Been Thinking About Plant Protein All Wrong?
Watch the full live cooking session with Chef Martin Oswald in the video above. Recipes for the creamy tofu scramble, tofu medallion with lupini bean cake, and peanut butter chocolate mousse can be found here.Join us in the Habit Healers Skool community where Chef Martin and I work together to bring culinary medicine and healing habits to you live every week in our exclusive community.Most people
Why You Should Never Trust a Percentage in a Headline
You’ve seen the headlines: “Drug cuts heart attack risk by 50%.” It sounds dramatic. Reassuring. Urgent. But in this episode, I show you exactly how that single percentage is designed to mislead you.I break down the difference between Relative Risk and Absolute Risk — and why one makes for great marketing while the other tells you what actually matters to your life. We walk through real numbers to
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