Mental Health Awareness Month: Special Podcast Episodes

This month, I’m taking a break from the regular podcast content to bring episodes focused on bringing awareness to all the tools that support our mental health. Contrary to what the media may tell you, you can change your brain. You can heal from mental illness. You can access resources beyond medication and more sleep, and many of those resources are free, like these episodes.

In Episode 135, I share my story of overcoming PTSD, depression, and bipolar disorder in a way I haven’t shared before.

Key Topics:

The growing epidemic of mental health issues in teens
The root causes to my own mental health issues and how I struggled to find treatment that supported my mental well-being
The medication weaning process and how I was able to get off medication I had been on for 18 years
The tools I used to support healing and how I continue to prioritize my mental health to prevent recurring issues

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How Movement Can Help You Listen to Your Body’s Needs

Our bodies tell us things about every day, but typically we wait for someone else to tell us what’s going on before we listen. In this episode, we talk about finding a way to tune into our unique body’s needs through both stillness and movement.

Elise Carter has been a student of yoga for over two decades, and a small business owner for sixteen years. She has both taught and studied with a number of inspiring yogis across the country and has accumulated additional teaching certifications in several different lineages of yoga. Elise currently holds the E-RYT 500 teaching designation, the honor given by Yoga Alliance to their most senior teachers. She has spent countless hours in studio (both practicing and teaching), and has developed an unquenchable thirst for all things yoga. Currently, she is the owner of beFree yoga in Tyler, Texas, where she teaches several times a week and leads yoga teacher trainings.

Download and listen here or wherever you get podcasts!

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How Your Gut and Skin Microbiome Affect Acne

Yes, your gut microbiome is important… but what about the microbiome on your skin? Do we need certain types of bacteria for healthy skin?

In this recent episode of the podcast, we dig into the gut AND skin microbiome to discuss just how much your microbiome plays a role in your skin health. Download here or find wherever you get podcasts!

Dr. Yug Varma has 10+ years of microbiome research experience including an extensive background in bio-organic chemistry, microbiology, and synthetic biology. Dr. Varma received his scientific training at several distinguished academic institutions, including Johns Hopkins University (PhD) and University of California, San Francisco. His scientific work has been published in many prestigious journals, including Nature. Dr. Varma’s mission is to change the way we treat chronic bacterial diseases, and is working tirelessly to achieve this goal with a microbiome-based technology platform. He is passionate about promoting scientific literacy, and devotes a significant amount of time demystifying microbiome research and making the latest research accessible to the general public.

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How Your Brain Responds to Processed Food

Can your brain become addicted to processed food? According to recent podcast guest Dr. Joan Ifland, who recently published the textbook on processed food addiction, our brains are extremely susceptible to processed food addiction. In this recent episode, she explains why we get addicted to processed food, how the food companies encourage it, and how the healthcare system gaslights patients who can’t get out of the addiction cycle.

Download and listen to the episode here, or find wherever you get podcasts.

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Keys to Creating Immune Resilience

Have you heard the phrase psychoneuroimmunoendocrinology? Well, you have now!

In this recent episode, I pick Dr. Aaron Hartman’s brain on the topic of long Covid and why creating a healthy immune system impacts everything else in our bodies! We discuss the unique interconnectedness in our bodies and the latest and greatest in health research.

Dr. Aaron Hartman is the founder of Richmond Integrative and Functional Medicine in Richmond, Virginia. He helps his patients identify leverage points in key areas of their lifestyle & health that harness their body’s remarkable power to heal and begin living the vibrant life they deserve. He has participated in over 60 clinical studies and has become the ‘go to’ doctor for difficult and hard cases in central Virginia – positively impacting his own daughter’s MS with his unique, integrative approach to health.

Download and listen here or find wherever you get podcasts!

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Dissecting Today’s Most Popular Diets

We know that diets fail 95% of the time, but think of it this way – if dieting was a medication, the FDA would never approve it.

Dieting never got to the root of my health issues. In fact, it only made things worse. My guest Heather Creekmore of Compared to Who says the same thing. Both of us have made pretty amazing health transformations – and we did it without dieting.

With spiritual, mental, emotional, and yes, physical health at the forefront of our conversation, in this podcast episode we discuss the popular dieting trends this summer.

Download and listen to this episode here or get wherever you listen to podcasts!

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Why Glutathione May Be the Missing Puzzle Piece in Your Health

I’ve never devoted an entire episode to ONE powerful antioxidant, but thanks to my guest, Dr. Nayan Patel, this discussion about glutathione is fascinating.

Dr. Patel is an internationally recognized expert, consultant, lecturer on glutathione, and has been a respected pharmacist for twenty-five years. Dr. Patel received his PharmD degree from the USC School of Pharmacy, where he now serves as an adjunct faculty member. He has traveled the world educating practitioners and pharmacists on advanced biochemistry and anti-aging science. His book, “The Glutathione Revolution” is available now.

Download and listen to this episode here or listen wherever you get podcasts.

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Identifying Root Causes of Bipolar Disorder

I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder (what they then called “manic depressive illness”) in 1999. While the diagnosis matched the symptoms I was experiencing, the treatment I received never seemed to make things better… and they never treated the root of why I was struggling.

While I have shared about my personal experience with bipolar disorder, PTSD, and depression and I have interviewed many different experts who share ways to treat the root of chronic disease, I have never devoted the majority of an episode to bipolar disorder and its root causes.

Ellen Vora, MD received her B.A. from Yale University and attended Columbia University medical school. She’s a board-certified psychiatrist, medical acupuncturist, and yoga teacher. Dr. Vora takes a functional medicine approach to mental health—considering the whole person and addressing imbalance at the root, rather than reflexively prescribing medication. Dr. Vora’s book, The Anatomy of Anxiety, comes out in March 2022.

Recording this episode was personal for me. It helped me put together the puzzle pieces of my health even further. Download here or listen wherever you get podcasts.

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How to Survive Stress Without Burning Out

It is well-known that chronic stress contributes to chronic disease. Research shows that as much as 90% of illness is attributed to the impact of stress. Finding a way to manage stress in our very busy world of constant notifications is a challenge. So I was excited to connect with Erica Cuni for this recent podcast episode. Spoiler: multiple listeners have written in to tell me that this is their favorite one!

Erica Cuni, known as “The Burnout Professor,” is a stress and burnout expert. She teaches high-achievers how to consciously thrive through an integrative approach. Erica is the founder of “The C.U.N.I. Method” – which stands for Create Undeniable Natural Impact. She is a former Trauma Psychotherapist, Clinical Director, and Adjunct Lecturer and Clinical Professor at Central Connecticut State University. Her mission is to help make the mental health field more effective, accessible, decolonized, and non-stigmatizing.

Download this episode here or listen wherever you get podcasts.

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Mental Health Solutions: Where Are We Now?

We are in the middle of a serious mental health epidemic (I feel like a broken record when I repeat that statement). More and more people are suffering from anxiety, depression, and other mental illnesses that ever before. We have medication and talk therapy, but how many people are actually receiving relief from their symptoms and actually getting better?

This recent podcast episode with Dr. Josh Friedman tackles why we are stalled in our current mental health care treatments, and he proposes ways to get unstuck.

Dr. Josh Friedman earned his doctorate in Psychology from New York University and did post-doctoral training in Psychoanalysis from the Training and Research Institute for Self Psychology (TRISP) in New York City. After working in the field for a few years, he realized that something was missing from traditional mental health treatment. Curiosity and a chance meeting led him to discover the world of Nutritional Psychology, which teaches that many psychological issues are caused or made worse by underlying biochemical/nutritional deficiencies. Dr. Josh started Alternative Mental Health Solution to help people find and fix the ROOT cause of their mental health struggles.

Download this episode here or find wherever you get podcasts.