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a board-certified lifestyle medicine physician, and in my practice I see how much suffering comes from following outdated sleep advice.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
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    10 mins
  • Are You Chasing a Finish Line That Keeps Moving?

    Are You Chasing a Finish Line That Keeps Moving?
    May 12 2026
    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 months ago from nothing. And I still lie awake some nights thinking I should be doing better. I should reach more people. I should write better articles. I could help more. It’s ridiculous when I say it out loud, and I know that, and it doesn’t stop the feeling.Dr. Jud had just published an article called “Perfectionism Is a Calibration Problem”, and I wanted to dig into it with him because I recognized myself in almost every paragraph.The Gambler Who Wasn’t GamblingOne of his patients described his own perfectionism this way. He said he felt like a gambler going deeper into debt, thinking the only thing he could do was gamble more, because stopping wouldn’t solve the debt.He wasn’t talking about money. He was talking about his work.Dr. Jud said he loved that description because it captured something he’d been seeing in patients for decades. The man knew he was never going to win. Perfectionism, for him, wasn’t about reaching a standard. It was about constantly moving the goalposts. He’d get close to whatever he was aiming for, and then he’d raise the bar on himself. Again and again and again.I told Dr. Jud that I do this too. I go back and revise articles I’ve already published. Articles that people have already read and commented on and liked. He looked at me and said, essentially, your articles are fine, Laurie. They’re working. The fact that you’re going back to change them is the loop in action.I know. I have a problem. Hence the free session.The Most Disturbing Love Story Ever ComposedDr. Jud brought up something unexpected during our conversation. He referenced a symphony by Hector Berlioz, the Symphonie Fantastique, which he had written about in his article. He played it in college, and the backstory is wild.Berlioz was a French composer who fell madly in love with an Irish actress named Harriet Smithson. She didn’t speak French. He didn’t speak English. He pursued her relentlessly anyway and wrote an entire symphony to woo her. The whole piece is built around a musical theme called the idée fixe, which translates to “fixed idea.” It represents total obsessive fixation.In the symphony, the main character descends into an opium dream. That theme keeps coming back in every movement, but each time it returns more distorted, more unrecognizable. By the fourth movement, the character has murdered his love interest and marches to the guillotine. You can hear the drumroll, the blade, and then the head bouncing into the basket. The fifth movement is a witch’s sabbath where the beloved dances over his grave.Dr. Jud pointed out that Berlioz likely borrowed the idée fixe concept from French psychiatry at the time. It was a term floating around in medical circles in the 1800s. So a symphony about romantic obsession has its roots in clinical descriptions of how the mind gets stuck.That’s the whole point of pairing these two things, Dr. Jud said. If you get too consumed by anything, it doesn’t end well.If you want to hear it, here’s a full documentary and concert performance. Fair warning, it’s dark, but the music is extraordinary, and understanding the story behind it changes how you hear every movement.An Uncalibrated GaugeSo what do you actually do about it? Dr. Jud didn’t go to the usual place of willpower or discipline. He went to measurement.He compared perfectionism to a blood glucose monitor that isn’t calibrated. If the device keeps shifting its readings, you’ll never get a number you can trust. That’s what happens when we rely on our own internal sense of “good enough” as the only standard. We keep changing what good enough means. On a bad day, nothing passes. On a good day, we might let something through, but we’ll second-guess it within the hour.His suggestion was to get external reference points. For his patient, that meant working with a coach. For me, it’s been reader feedback.I learned this the hard way. Early on, I used some attention-grabbing titles, the kind marketing courses teach you to write. One of my readers told me that a headline I’d written caused her so much anxiety that she didn’t even open the article. She said she loved my work but that title made her feel afraid.I could have taken that personally. For a second, I did. My heart rate went up. I felt defensive. But then I sat with it and thought about where she was coming from. And she was right. That wasn’t the kind of writer I wanted to be. So I changed how I write titles. That one piece of feedback has shaped hundreds of articles since.When Are You Spending...
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    35 mins
  • What If Fourteen Risk Factors Explained Nearly Half of All Dementia, and You Could Change Every One?

    What If Fourteen Risk Factors Explained Nearly Half of All Dementia, and You Could Change Every One?
    May 8 2026

    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 physician, and I want you to hear this clearly: the window where these changes matter most is midlife, often years or decades before symptoms show up. The same habits that lower your LDL cholesterol, stabilize your blood sugar, and protect your heart are also building a brain that resists Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive decline. Hearing loss and high LDL are now tied as the two largest individual risk factors for dementia, and most people have never had a conversation about either one through the lens of brain health.

    In this episode, you will learn how to translate the science into a real plan, including the seven daily habits with the strongest evidence and the medical appointments worth booking now.

    What you will learn:

    * How exercise, a Mediterranean and plant-forward diet, and quality sleep protect against cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease

    * Why hearing loss is one of the largest modifiable risk factors for dementia and what to ask your audiologist

    * How LDL cholesterol, blood pressure, and A1c connect to long-term brain health

    * The role of social connection, stress management, and depression treatment in dementia prevention

    * Why midlife is the most important window for brain health and where to start this week

    Dr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/what-if-fourteen-risk-factors-explained

    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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    22 mins
  • Can You Really Cook a Dish That Makes You Forget About Salt?

    Can You Really Cook a Dish That Makes You Forget About Salt?
    May 7 2026
    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 sodium.” Nobody tells them how to make food taste good after they do.This what Chef Martin Oswald taught us today’s live session. Martin has developed recipes for Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn’s program, where the protocols are strict and allow no oil and no sodium at all. He has also cooked for diabetic populations where two out of three patients have hypertension riding alongside their blood sugar problems. He has had to figure out, at a professional level, how to build flavor when the easiest shortcut in the kitchen is off the table.What he taught us today was not a recipe but a system. Six contrasts that, when layered into a single dish, create so much happening on your palate that you stop reaching for the salt shaker. Then he proved it by building the dish in real time and eating it in front of me from 5,000 miles away.I want to walk you through what he covered.Sweet and SourThis is the one most people already know from Chinese takeout, but Martin took it somewhere more useful. His first move was to hold up a bottle of balsamic vinegar, and I guessed it immediately, which I was proud of for about three seconds before he explained the part I did not know.Plain vinegar is thin. You taste it for a moment and then it vanishes, which is the problem with using it as a sodium replacement. Salt has staying power on your tongue, and a splash of vinegar does not compete with that.So Martin reduces his balsamic. He cooks it down by about 50 percent, which takes roughly twelve minutes, and what comes out is thick, glossy, and viscous enough that it clings to a spoon. That viscosity is the key. When you drizzle reduced balsamic onto a dish, it stays on your palate long enough to deliver a sting that mimics what salt does. The acidity hits the same spot on the top of your tongue. It is not sodium, but your taste buds respond to the same physical sensation.Then comes the balance. If you have something sour, you need something sweet to play against it. Martin used apple slices, though you could just as easily use mango. The point is not a specific fruit but the habit of always thinking in pairs, so that wherever there is acid, there is sweetness somewhere nearby.Spicy and RichThis one surprised me. Martin held up a jar of Italian chili flakes and asked me what the contrast to spiciness should be. I would have guessed sweet, because that is how Asian cuisine often handles heat, and it works. But Martin went in a different direction.He reached for richness. Almond butter, tahini, and cashew butter all work here. When something rich coats your palate, it creates a physical barrier that dampens the sting of the chili. Think about how olive oil coats your mouth and suddenly you are tasting the oil more than whatever was underneath it. Nut butters work the same way. The fat sits on your taste buds and softens the spiciness so you get the flavor of the chili without the burn overwhelming everything else. If you have ever made a dish that turned out too hot, adding a spoonful of almond butter or tahini will pull it back into balance.Hot and ColdThis was the one I got right, and I was unreasonably pleased about it. A hot dish needs a cold contrast. Martin’s go-to technique, one he used throughout his years of catering with 20 live cooking stations and 50 to 60 cooks, was to place a cold, crunchy salad directly on top of a hot entree rather than on the side. The temperature difference between the warm food and the cool greens creates a contrast that keeps your palate engaged bite after bite, so each spoonful feels a little different from the last.Spices and Fresh HerbsThis is a concept that takes a moment to land, because most home cooks think of spices and herbs as doing the same job. They do not. Spices go into the base, getting toasted into the grain and cooked into the sauce and built into the bottom layers of a dish. Herbs come in later and sit on top, raw or barely cooked, adding a brightness that plays against the deeper warmth of the spices underneath.Martin listed some of his favorites for sodium replacement cooking, including cumin, caraway seeds (though he never uses those two together, saying they clash), coriander, and fenugreek. Each one acts as a foundation. Then he pairs them with fresh herbs, like parsley with caraway or cilantro with cumin. Every culinary tradition has its own version of this pairing, and the reason they all do it is because the contrast between a cooked spice and a fresh herb makes food feel more complete.He also mentioned celery seed, and then immediately confessed it is the one ingredient he...
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    52 mins
  • The Bathroom Habit That May Be Raising Your Blood Pressure

    The Bathroom Habit That May Be Raising Your Blood Pressure
    May 6 2026

    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 signaling molecules in your cardiovascular system. Research shows that daily antiseptic mouthwash use can wipe out the nitrate-reducing bacteria in your mouth that your body relies on to produce it, and short-term studies link this habit to rising blood pressure and a higher risk of prediabetes and hypertension.

    I’ll walk you through the two different systems your body uses to make nitric oxide, why one of them depends entirely on your oral microbiome, and the simple four-part protocol I give my patients to restore healthy nitric oxide production naturally, using food, movement, smarter oral care, and your breath.

    What you’ll learn in this episode:

    * Why nitric oxide is essential for healthy blood pressure, circulation, and endothelial function

    * How antiseptic mouthwash may be linked to hypertension and prediabetes

    * The highest-nitrate foods for lowering blood pressure naturally, including arugula, beets, and leafy greens

    * Why nasal breathing beats mouth breathing for cardiovascular and lung health

    * A simple “bee breath” practice that increases nitric oxide output from your sinuses

    * The role of nitric oxide in men’s health and erectile function

    Dr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/the-bathroom-habit-that-may-be-raising

    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
  • Did Your Brain Accidentally Train Itself to Be Anxious?

    Did Your Brain Accidentally Train Itself to Be Anxious?
    May 1 2026

    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 neuroscientist and psychiatrist Dr. Jud Brewer at Brown University, I explain how anxiety follows the same trigger, behavior, reward cycle that drives stress eating, phone-checking, and other everyday habits. I’ll share why your prefrontal cortex goes offline under stress, what brain imaging reveals about the posterior cingulate cortex and rumination, and how a simple ten-second practice called the Curiosity Pause can begin to rewire the loop. We also talk about why perimenopause and menopause can make worry feel harder to manage, and when it’s time to bring in professional support for anxiety, panic attacks, or depression.

    What you’ll learn in this episode:

    * How the anxiety habit loop forms in the brain and why willpower can’t override it

    * Why trying harder to stop worrying often makes rumination worse

    * The four steps of the RAIN technique (Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Note)

    * How curiosity acts as a “bigger, better offer” for your brain’s reward system

    * Why women in perimenopause and menopause may notice rising anxiety and worry

    * When to seek professional help for generalized anxiety disorder or panic

    Dr. Marbas’s Substack Article:https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/did-your-brain-accidentally-trainA 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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    13 mins