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The Habit Healers

The Habit Healers

Written by: Laurie Marbas MD MBA
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About this listen

 Welcome to The Habit Healers Podcast—where transformation starts with a single habit. Hosted by Dr. Laurie Marbas, this podcast is for anyone ready to break free from chronic health struggles, rewire their habits, and create lasting healing. Through powerful stories, science-backed strategies, and real-world tools, we dive deep into the micro shifts that lead to massive health transformations. You’ll learn how to heal beyond prescriptions—how to nourish your body, reprogram your mind, and build the habits that make vibrant health effortless. Whether you’re looking to reverse disease, boost energy, or finally make health a way of life, this podcast will show you how. Because true healing isn’t about willpower—it’s about design. And you’re always just one healing habit away.

drlauriemarbas.substack.comLaurie Marbas, MD, MBA Alternative & Complementary Medicine Hygiene & Healthy Living
Episodes
  • How Many of These 14 Sleep Myths Do You Still Believe?

    How Many of These 14 Sleep Myths Do You Still Believe?
    May 15 2026

    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 regularity, meaning how consistent your bedtime and wake time are from day to day, may predict all-cause mortality better than total sleep duration. Weekend recovery sleep can make insulin sensitivity worse, not better. Evening exercise does not ruin your sleep. A glass of wine is dismantling your sleep architecture even when it feels like it’s helping you drift off. And women are dramatically underdiagnosed with sleep apnea because the classic stereotype tells the wrong story.

    I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, a board-certified lifestyle medicine physician, and in my practice I see how much suffering comes from following outdated sleep advice. This episode replaces myth with mechanism so you can build a sleep routine that actually works.

    What you’ll learn:

    * Why sleep regularity may matter as much as total sleep hours for longevity and brain health

    * The truth about weekend catch-up sleep and your circadian rhythm

    * Why melatonin is a chronobiotic, not a sleeping pill, and when to actually use it

    * How sleep apnea presents differently in women and lean adults

    * What CBT-I is and why it outperforms medication for chronic insomnia

    * Why hitting snooze is probably fine, and the one habit to start Monday

    Dr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/how-many-of-these-14-sleep-myths

    A Big Thank You To Our Sponsors:

    If you want the best supplement to help you on your plant-based journey, you have to try Complement: https://lovecomplement.com/?aff=62



    Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe
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    15 mins
  • Can a Roasted Onion Replace the Sugar in Your Cooking?

    Can a Roasted Onion Replace the Sugar in Your Cooking?
    May 14 2026
    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 desserts or salad dressings. But what about a bowl of risotto? A pasta sauce? A side dish of roasted vegetables? In this week’s Habit Healers live, Chef Martin Oswald made the case that savory food needs sweetness too, and that the best place to find it is not in the sugar bowl. It is already sitting in your produce drawer.The Sweetness You Never NoticedMartin started the session with a question, “How much sugar is in a tomato?” The answer, per 100 grams of ripe tomato, is about 2.4 grams. That is roughly a quarter of a teaspoon. Not much, until you consider how that sweetness plays off the acidity of a good vinaigrette.Then he walked through the lineup. A sweet potato comes in at about 2.8 grams of sugar per 100 grams, raw. A red bell pepper has around 4.2. Carrots sit at about 4.7. English peas are higher still. Corn tops them. And beets land at roughly 6.8 grams per 100 grams.But the real surprise was shallots. That tiny onion, the one most home cooks use sparingly, packs about 7.9 grams of sugar per 100 grams. More than a teaspoon in a single small handful.Now, before anyone panics about the sugar in their vegetables, Martin was quick to point out the obvious. These sugars come packaged with fiber and a range of vitamins and minerals. They are nothing like the tablespoon of refined sugar lurking in a burger bun or the sweetened dressings you get at most restaurants. The goal is not avoidance but awareness, learning to let those natural sugars do the work that refined sweeteners usually handle.Why Roasting Changes EverythingIf you bite into a raw onion, you are not going to taste sweetness. You are going to taste something sharp enough to make your eyes water. The sugar is there, but so are pungent sulfur compounds that overwhelm the palate.Roasting changes the equation. Heat drives off water, which concentrates whatever sugar is present in the vegetable. It also triggers chemical reactions between sugars and amino acids that produce entirely new flavor compounds. The effect is dramatic. A raw sweet potato tastes starchy. A roasted sweet potato at 330 degrees for an hour tastes like dessert.Chefs have known this for decades. Martin described how, early in his career at European health resorts, the standard approach was to steam everything. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, he and his colleagues had shifted to roasting because the flavor difference was so stark. Roasted carrots, roasted beets, roasted peppers. The produce was the same. The technique made it taste completely different.One important note on temperature. Martin roasts at 330 to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, never higher. Going above 400 degrees risks creating acrylamide, a compound formed when starchy foods are heated to high temperatures and browned too aggressively. The goal is golden color, not dark brown. As Martin put it, go for the gold.Two Ways to Roast Onions (and Why You Should Make a Big Batch)Martin demonstrated two methods for turning raw onions into something sweet and deeply flavored.The stovetop method is faster and more hands-on. Slice two onions about a quarter-inch thick, put them in a dry pan over medium heat, and let them cook for three to five minutes. When they start to stick, add a small splash of water and let that cook off. Repeat the process, adding water and letting it evaporate, until the onions turn golden.The oven method is what Martin called the lazy version, and it is the one I am more likely to use. Slice two onions, put them in a covered pan, and roast at around 330 degrees for about 50 minutes. Then remove the cover and let them cook another 15 minutes to finish browning. Set a timer, walk away, come back to golden onions.Either way, Martin’s strong recommendation was to cook in big batches. These roasted onions freeze beautifully and save time every night of the week. You can toss them into a bolognese, spread them on hummus toast, pile them onto a pizza, or fold them into a grain bowl. One session at the stove or oven sets you up for a week of meals.A bonus tip from the session that had nothing to do with sweetness but earned the biggest reaction from the audience. If you refrigerate your onions overnight before cutting them, the cold suppresses the enzyme responsible for making you cry. Martin said it is not a perfect fix if you are processing 200 pounds of onions for a catering event, but for a home cook doing two or three, it makes a real difference.The Soubise, ReinventedThe centerpiece of this week’s session was a sauce most home cooks have never heard of. A soubise is a classic French onion ...
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    44 mins
  • Your Body Has a Built-In Blood Sugar Sponge. It's in Your Calf.

    Your Body Has a Built-In Blood Sugar Sponge. It's in Your Calf.
    May 13 2026

    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 or more hours a day, and most of our muscles are doing almost nothing during that time. But there’s one outlier: the soleus, a small, flat muscle deep in your calf that is roughly 88% slow-twitch endurance fibers, the highest ratio of any muscle ever measured. A 2022 University of Houston study found that activating this muscle through a simple seated heel-raise dropped post-meal blood sugar spikes by up to 52% and cut insulin demand by 60%. An early replication in people with prediabetes showed a 32% reduction. The science is still early, but the muscle biology is well-established, and the early lab results are hard to ignore.

    What you’ll learn:

    * Why the soleus muscle is uniquely designed to burn blood sugar without fatiguing

    * How the soleus push-up reduces postprandial blood glucose and insulin spikes

    * The exact technique for performing soleus push-ups at your desk

    * Why bending your knee at 90 degrees is the key to activating the right muscle

    * What the research actually shows, and what we still don’t know

    * How to build this micro-movement into long stretches of sittingI am running a few minutes late; my previous meeting is running over.

    Dr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/your-body-has-a-built-in-blood-sugarA Big Thank You To Our Sponsors:

    If you want the best supplement to help you on your plant-based journey, you have to try Complement: https://lovecomplement.com/?aff=62



    Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe
    Show More Show Less
    10 mins
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