My Ask the Doctor series on the Healthier Together podcast was built around the idea that functional doctors have SO much incredible information about transforming our health, but the really great ones can be hard to find, tricky to get appointments with, and unfortunately quite expensive.
On these episodes, I invite on the best doctors in the world and ask them all of my questions—and yours!—about a topic. We have Ask the Doctor episodes about everything from hormones to longevity to gut health, and I’m constantly seeking out new doctors and topics to cover. Leave a comment below if there’s a topic you’d love to learn more about or doctor you think I should interview! And in the meantime, check out the episodes below—I promise you’ll walk away from each with sooo much new information, but more importantly, tangible tips to implement.
Debunking Skincare Myths with Dr. Whitney Bowe
This episode dives right into busting the skincare trends that are myths and identifying the ones that actually work. I learned so much from this conversation with Dr. Whitney Bowe, a renowned New York based dermatologist, research scientist, and thought leader. She’s the author of the best-selling book The Beauty of Dirty Skin and has been featured as an expert by Good Morning America, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Allure, InStyle, Vogue, and more.
On this episode, we talk about:
- her expert on skincare trends such as slugging, red light therapy, collagen, face shaving, ice rolling, and more
- the best forms of exfoliation for different kinds of skin and how often you should be doing it
- which skincare steps are optional and which are 100% necessary for everyone
- what skin cycling actually means and the best way to do it for your skin type
- the exact ingredients you should be looking for and avoiding in sunscreens
- why sunless tanner could be causing long term damage to your skin (and how to combat it)
- how much drinking a lot of water really make a difference in skin moisture
- why you should throw away your washcloth
- how to optimize your circadian rhythm for glowing skin
- the number one food you should be prioritizing in your diet for glowy skin
The Future of Gut Health with Dr. Will Bulsiewicz
This is a mega episode all about the future of gut health, so we can all heal our guts utilizing all of the ground breaking research that’s emerging in the field. Dr. Will Bulsiewicz is an award winning gastroenterologist, internationally recognized gut health expert and the New York Times-bestselling author of Fiber Fueled and The Fiber Fueled Cookbook.
On this episode we talk about:
- how the gut brain axis actually works
- the best protocols for helping mental health issues
- how to optimize the circadian rhythm of your gut microbiome
- the one gut health change that studies show dramatically impacts Covid outcomes
- the cutting edge gut protocols that we’re starting to use to treat cancer
- the best type of workout for your microbiome
- an exact protocol for before, during, and after taking antibiotics
- why most people are treating SIBO wrong
- the hidden causes of bloating and constipation that no one is talking about
Aging with Dr. Becca Levy
This episode is all about busting the myths around aging, and learning how we can live longer and feel better with age. I sat down with Dr. Becca Levy who is a Professor of Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health and Professor of Psychology at Yale University. Levy has authored pathfinding studies have changed the way we think about aging and received numerous awards. Her new book, Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs About Aging Determine How Long and Well You Live, is available for pre-order now—it comes out on April 12 and will be available wherever books are sold!
On this episode, we talk about:
- how your beliefs about aging can literally negatively impact cortisol and inflammation levels
- the single shift that can dramatically impact the genes that impact the expression of Alzheimer’s and dementia (even if you have the “riskier genes”)
- 3 tangible ways you can improve your beliefs around aging
- why the idea that memory gets worse as you get older is a myth (plus, simple ways to improve your memory!)
- how to change your beliefs around aging and your body even if you’re experiencing health problems or society is bombarding you with negative messaging
- the core reason WHY we have so many anti-aging beliefs (the answer will surprise you!)
- how different cultures around the world approach aging
- things that get better as you age, according to science
Increasing Focus with Dr. Amishi Jha
This episode dives right into focus and attention with neuroscientist and professor of psychology at the University of Miami., Dr. Amishi Jha Dr. Jha’s work has been featured at NATO, the World Economic Forum, and The Pentagon, her Ted Talk, “How To Train Your Wandering Mind” has been viewed more than 5 million times, and her brilliant new book, Peak Mind: Find Your Focus, Own Your Attention, Invest 12 Minutes a Day, is available wherever books are sold.
On this episode, we talk about:
- why it’s so hard to focus
- why you don’t need to detox from your phone to get your focus back (and what to do instead)
- how to train your attention AWAY from things causing you distress or anxiety, like the news or phobias
- exactly where to start if you want to improve your focus or attention span
- the one specific daily practice that research shows improves your focus the most
- the difference in results between doing activities mindfully and having a specific meditation practice
- a pragmatic technique to be a better listener
- how to use science to KEEP other people’s attention better
- easy tricks to be a better public speaker
- how to hack timing to maximize attention span when you need it most
- the best instant practice to replenish your focus and attention (and the practices that don’t work at all)
- how to prep for a moment or event you want to be hyper focused for (like a big meeting or speech)
Life Changes with Dr. Katy Milkman
This Ask the Doctor episode gives you the science you need to make changes that will make every facet of your life better, from your career to fitness to relationships. Our guest is Dr. Katy Milkman, a behavioral scientist, author, and Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. She’s advised dozens of organizations on how to encourage positive change, including Google, the White House, the U.S. Department of Defense, Walmart, and the American Red Cross. Her book was named one of the eight best books for healthy living in 2021 by the NYTimes.
On this episode, we talk about:
- the most common things people want to change in their life
- why laziness can be a huge benefit (and exactly how to harness it)
- an easy, science-backed trick for building habits
- the number one thing people get wrong when trying to build habits
- how to get PAID to work out (yes, really)
- research-backed tweaks to overcome procrastination and be more productive at work
- how to harness science-backed techniques to eat healthier
- how to figure out what you should actually change to get the life that you want
- the daily decisions that make up 40% of deaths in the US
- the best time to make a big change if you want it to stick
- how to use temptation bundling to make hard things a habit
- what science says about manifestation (it’ll surprise you!)
- specific action steps toward becoming more confident
- how to form an Advice Club and why it’ll change your life
- what to do when you try to make a change and fail
Immune Health with Dr. Heather Moday
This Ask the Doctor episode features Dr. Heather Moday, one of the leaders in Functional Medicine specifically for allergies and immune health. Dr. Moday is an Allergist and Immunologist, Integrative and Functional Medicine Physician who is also a certified practitioner through the Institute for Functional Medicine. She is the owner and medical director of the Moday Center for Functional Medicine and the author of The Immunotype Breakthrough – Your Personalized Plan To Balance Your Immune System, Optimize Health And Build Lifelong Resistance.
On this episode, we talk about:
- The exact tests to find out the health of your immune system
- How much immune health is genetic and how much is environmental
- The many, many WAYS your immune system impacts your overall health (beyond what you think!)
- Why your immune health and inflammation are so connected
- What causes inflammation and what the effects of high inflammation levels are
- How to tell if you have chronic inflammation
- The best ways to KEEP from getting sick
- How your microbiome impacts your immune system
- How to keep your microbiome healthy
- Exactly what to do when you’re sick or you feel like you’re getting sick
- The best ways to treat long COVID, based on current research
Burn Out with Dr. Robin Berzin
This episode is all about burn out, and how to live a life full of energy and optimistic calm! My guest is the amazing Dr. Berzin, founder and CEO of Parsley Health. She attended medical school at Columbia University and trained in Internal Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. She’s recognized by the World Economic Forum as a Tech Pioneer, named as one of the 100 Most Innovative Women in Business by Inc. Magazine, and praised by Fast Company for founding one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies.
On this episode, we talk about:
- The exact symptoms that can tell you if you’re burnt out
- How to know when your burn out is because of something in your body versus your mind
- Tests you can ask your doctor for to see if you’re burnt out
- How to manage your cortisol to manage your burnout
- The best workouts to decrease burn out (it’s not what you think!)
- The minimum recommend workout to get results, and exactly how to tell when it’s been effective
- How to eat for more energy
- The best supplements for stress and low energy
- A science-based argument that will convince even skeptics to start meditating
- The minimum amount you need to meditate to get the benefits
- Easy, actionable steps to help manage your relationship with technology
Gut Health Hacks with Dr. Megan Rossi
This Ask the Doctor episode guest is the amazing Dr. Megan Rossi, a registered dietitian and nutritionist, with a PhD in gut health and a research fellowship at King’s College London. She’s the author of the internationally best-selling book Love Your Gut and the founder of the wildly popular website theguthealthdoctor.com and the @theguthealthdoctor Instagram page.
On this episode, we talk about:
- The number one way to support your microbiome, even during times of more indulgence
- What actually causes bloating—and exactly how to fix it
- A genius tip for getting rid of travel-induced constipation, even when nothing else works
- What a gut-health expert actually eats on a plane
- The best general constipation cures
- How to change your microbiome to eliminate sugar cravings
- How to prevent a hangover, and easy solutions if you end up with one anyway
- How to instantly feel better after an overly indulgent meal
- What the research says about colonics, food combining, digestive enzymes, and more
- One gut health thing a lot of people THINK is helpful or works but it really doesn’t
- One gut health thing we should all be doing but probably aren’t
Stress with Dr. Samantha Boardman
This episode is all about STRESS. My guest today is Dr. Samantha Boardman, who did her undergrad at Harvard before getting her MD at Cornell and going back for a masters in Applied Positive Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. She now has a thriving psychiatry practice in New York City and a brand new book called Everyday Vitality: Turning Stress into Strength, which is available wherever books are sold. We talk about:
- The 2 most science-backed ways to actually feel restored and relaxed in your off time
- Science backed ways to deal with stress RIGHT now, in less than 5 minutes
- The best type of workout for stress
- The daily practices we should all incorporate to keep stress levels low
- How to stop doom scrolling and develop a less stressful relationship with the news
- How stress can impact weight gain, and how to mitigate that
- How to deal with stress caused by family relationships and boundary issues
- How to make your gratitude practice 100x more effective
- The one stress-relieving practice we should all be doing daily—but aren’t
Dental Health with Dr. Mark Burhenne
This was a VERY highly requested episode, all about dental health and oral hygiene. I talked with Dr. Mark Burhenne, the creator of AsktheDentist.com and the #1 bestselling author of The 8-Hour Sleep Paradox. He is a family and sleep medicine dentist whose advice regularly appears on TV, radio, and magazines, including NPR and CBS News. He answers all of our dental health questions, including:
- His thoughts on fluoride + his favorite fluoride alternatives
- His thoughts on oil pulling
- The safest way to whiten teeth
- How important flossing is really + the best time to do it
- His opinion of Waterpiking and tongue scraping
- Why flossing & brushing can actually help your gut health
- Why mouthwash is bad for you and what he recommends instead
- How to get rid of bad breath
Happiness with Dr. Rick Hanson
This may not be what you expected me to talk about on an Ask the Doctor episode, but it might be my most important conversation yet. I was so so honored to welcome psychologist Dr. Rick Hanson, PhD to the podcast. Rick is a Senior Fellow of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, and New York Times best-selling author of books including: Neurodharma, Resilient, Hardwiring Happiness, Buddha’s Brain, Just One Thing, and Mother Nurture. He’s lectured at NASA, Google, Oxford, and Harvard, and his work has been featured on the BBC, CBS, NPR, and other major media. We talk about:
- Exactly where to start for overcoming negative elements of life
- A super pragmatic practice to develop self-compassion and self-love, based on science
- A 3-step plan for confronting people who hurt you
- The best supplements for mental health
- How to know if you should be in therapy + the best tips for finding a good therapist
- A super actionable exercise to figure out what to spend your time on to create the most happiness
- The number one piece of advice for being happier in a relationship
- The number one tip for being happier when you’re single and don’t want to be
Weight Loss Myths with Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
This Ask the Doctor episode features Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, one of the most influential medical doctors in the UK. Dr Chatterjee is the host of the most listened to health podcast in the UK and Europe, Feel Better, Live More, and has written four Sunday Times best-selling books, including his most recent, Feel Great, Lose Weight. He hosts his own wellness show on BBC Radio, regularly appears on BBCNews and Television, and his TED talk, How To Make Disease Disappear, has been viewed over 3 million times. On this episode, we cover:
- The efficacy of calorie counting
- The impact of various diets on weight, including more wellness-y diets like keto and paleo
- The overlooked lifestyle elements that play a HUGE role in our weight
- How our microbiomes impact our weight
- A 3-step exercise to deal with food cravings—and figure out what you’re really hungry for
- How different types of workouts (cardio, weight lifting) impact our weight
- Plus his take on caffeine, fruit, intermittent fasting, alcohol, and more!
Longevity with Dr. Sara Gottfried
This episode—the Ask The Doctor: Longevity Edition—is all about living our longest, healthiest lives. My guest today is the amazing Dr. Sara Gottfried. Dr. Gottfried is oozing with credentials—she went to MIT and Harvard Medical School and is a NYTimes bestselling author. But what I love about her is her approach to medicine and patients. Her knowledge of science and data is impeccable, but so is her understanding that this is real life. You might want to embrace the wisdom of aging, and you might also wish you had less wrinkles. You might want to eat a perfect diet, but you might have two kids and a job. This episode is jam packed with pragmatic, actionable information to help you feel as good as possible for as long as possible. We talk about:
- The exact changes you should make in your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s to live your longest, healthiest life
- The best type of alcohol for longevity
- How having kids impacts longevity
- What the Blue Zones concept gets right about longevity—and what it misses
- How to reduce your risk of dementia, even if you have a genetic predisposition to it
- What to do when your doctors don’t want to give you hormone tests or don’t know to interpret them
- What causes wrinkles and gray hair and how to address them
Hormones with Dr. Aviva Romm
I am so excited about today’s guest, who I think is one of the most brilliant women’s health experts in the country—Dr. Aviva Romm. Aviva is a Yale-trained, board-certified family physician with a specialty in women’s health and obstetrics; certified professional midwife; and herbalist. She’s been called “the face of natural medicine in the 21st century” by Prevention Magazine, she is a member of the Yale Integrative Medicine Program’s Advisory Board, and currently serves as an Adjunct Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine. I asked her basically every hormone-related question I could think of, and all of the ones you shared with me on Instagram. This Ask the Doctor episode is truly SO comprehensive. We cover:
- Common signs that may mean your hormones are out of whack
- Exactly what tests to ask your doctor for to measure for thyroid issues, adrenal fatigue, and other hormonal issues
- Easy lifestyle changes you can make to support your thyroid
- How hormones impact weight gain
- The one food to eat before your period to get rid of PMS
- Her thoughts on seed cycling, which SO many of you asked about
- Steps you can take now to optimize your fertility in the future, and her thoughts on egg freezing
- Her thoughts on hormonal contraception, steps you can take to balance your hormones while on birth control, and how to detox from the pill if you choose to go off it
Gut Health with Dr. Will Bulsiewicz
This Ask the Doctor episode is all about gut health, and features the amazing Will Bulsiewicz, MD, known as Dr. B, the Gut Health MD. Dr. B is a board-certified gastroenterologist, a graduate of Georgetown University School of Medicine and was chief medical resident at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and chief gastroenterology fellow at the University of North Carolina Hospitals. He’s authored more than twenty articles in the top American gastroenterology journals, and he just released his very first book, Fiber Fueled. This episode is SO comprehensive—I tried to ask Will basically every question about keeping your gut health, including:
- The best type of alcohol for gut health
- The cause of acid reflux and how to deal with it
- The best supplements for gut health (and the ones that aren’t worth your money)
- The number one thing you can do to help nurture a healthy microbiome
- The best type of diet for gut health
- Is collagen good for your gut?
- Is coffee good for your gut?
- Are food sensitivity tests worth the money?
- The one gut health mistake everyone makes
Anxiety with Dr. Ellen Vora
This Ask the Doctor episode is all about anxiety, and features one of my favorite people in the wellness world, Dr. Ellen Vora. Ellen is a holistic psychiatrist who did her undergrad at Yale, then went to medical school at Columbia. Now, she has a private practice, is regularly featured on sites like goop and mindbodygreen, and she speaks around the country about natural ways of dealing with mental health. She’s also a yoga instructor and a licensed acupuncturist.
I wanted to create an episode that was THE go-to episode for anyone suffering from anxiety, whether it’s chronic or more situational, or even if you want to help with someone you love who’s dealing with anxiety. This episode is SO comprehensive—I tried to ask Ellen literally any question I’ve ever had about anxiety, and I asked all of you on Insta for your questions too. We talk about:
- The top 3 low-hanging fruits for anxiety
- The one supplement Ellen recommends to everyone
- How to tell if hormone imbalances are at the root of your anxiety — and exactly what to do if they are
- The ideal diet for someone with anxiety
- How caffeine impacts anxiety, and whether coffee can fit into an anti anxiety lifestyle
- How to taper off medication (and how to tell if you should)
- How to improve sleep but not let the idea of not sleeping making your anxiety worse
- What types of exercise are best for anxiety
- How to help your partner when they have anxiety and how to tell your partner how to help you when you have anxiety
A Little Bit of Everything with Dr. Will Cole
My doctor this Ask the Doctor episode is the amazing Will Cole, who has been both a friend and a source for my stories for years and years. He’s the author of two best-selling books, Ketotarian, which is all about doing a plant-based keto diet, and the newly released The Inflammation Spectrum, which helps people put together a custom plan to fight inflammation. He co-hosts the goop fellas podcast, and he’s a regular source and contributor to goop, mindbodygreen, and a number of other wellness websites. We cover a lot in this episode—I wanted to pack in as much information as possible. This includes:
- The top 3 foods that fight inflammation
- Lifestyle changes that take less than 5 minutes a day to fight inflammation
- How to get high quality sleep
- The healthiest type of birth control
- The best workouts for anxiety, gut health, hormone balance and more
- The bare minimum amount you should work out
- What lab tests you need to get an idea of how healthy you are, and how to get them without going to a doctor
- How to tell if a supplement is working, and how long to give each type
- What to do for better gut health generally, or if you have IBS or more severe issues