The Habit Healers Podcast Por Laurie Marbas MD MBA arte de portada

The Habit Healers

The Habit Healers

De: Laurie Marbas MD MBA
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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 Higiene y Vida Saludable Medicina Alternativa y Complementaria
Episodios
  • What If the Best Brain Exercise Has Nothing to Do With Your Brain?

    What If the Best Brain Exercise Has Nothing to Do With Your Brain?
    Feb 23 2026
    This article is based on my conversation with neuroscientist Julie Fratantoni, PhD, author of the Better Brain by Dr. Julie Substack, as part of the first-ever Brain Health Substack Summit hosted by The Habit Healers.Click here to join tomorrow for Brain Health Substack Summit Day 2 with Annie Fenn, MD.In the late 1990s, I was sitting in a pharmacology lecture during my first weeks of medical school, staring at a stack of handouts thick enough to be mistaken for a semester’s worth of reading. It was two weeks of material. I had three children at home. My youngest was ten months old.So I started drawing cartoons.I drew a Pepsi bottle to represent peptidoglycans, a class of molecules in bacterial cell walls. Then I drew a little van driving across the Pepsi bottle for vancomycin, the antibiotic that targets those molecules. I colored the van red, because vancomycin can cause a flushing reaction known as “Red Man Syndrome.” When test day came, I didn’t need to scramble for facts. I could see the picture in my head. The van. The Pepsi bottle. The red.My classmates noticed. They started borrowing my cartoons, which forced me to explain the drawings out loud, which meant I had to think even harder about what the relationships between the drug classes actually were. Nearly thirty years later, I still remember pharmacology details I probably have no business remembering. My daughter later went to medical school and adopted the same method. We published books about it called Visual Mnemonics.I did not know it at the time, but I had stumbled into something neuroscience now has a very clear explanation for. And it is not what most people think of when they hear the words “brain exercise.”That is exactly what I wanted to explore when I sat down with Julie Fratantoni, PhD, for the opening conversation of our Brain Health Substack Summit. Julie is a neuroscientist, the author of the Better Brain Substack, and someone who works directly with clients on cognitive performance. I expected her to talk about brain-training apps and puzzles. Instead, she dismantled almost everything I thought I knew about what it means to exercise your brain.The Basketball ProblemJulie likes to use basketball to explain two very different approaches to brain training.Imagine you are coaching a youth basketball team. You run drills: dribbling, passing, shooting. Each skill gets practiced on its own. This is what researchers call bottom-up training. You are building individual abilities one at a time, rep by rep. My husband coached our youngest’s basketball team, so I know this routine well. You drill the fundamentals first, because no strategy in the world matters if you cannot get the basics right.Now imagine game day. Suddenly your players need to decide when to pass, when to shoot, how to coordinate with teammates, how to adjust when the other team changes formation. That is top-down training. It requires the prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain right behind your forehead, which handles planning, problem-solving, decision-making, and the ability to pull separate pieces of information together into something useful.The same split exists in cognitive training. Bottom-up brain exercises target single skills like working memory (the ability to hold information in mind temporarily), attention, or processing speed (how fast your brain takes in and responds to information). Top-down exercises challenge your prefrontal cortex to do the harder work of organizing, judging, and thinking critically.Here is where things get interesting. Most commercial brain-training apps focus on bottom-up skills. And the majority of research shows that getting better at those games does not translate into real-life improvement. You get better at the game. That is about it.Julie was blunt about this during our live conversation. The majority of research shows that these games do not generalize to real life, she said, and she wanted to say it loud and clear because it is the question she gets asked more than almost any other.The 23-Hour ExperimentThere is, however, one notable exception, and it comes from one of the largest cognitive training studies ever conducted.The ACTIVE study enrolled about 3,000 adults aged 65 and older and assigned them to one of three types of cognitive training: speed training, memory training, or reasoning training. A fourth group served as a control and received no training at all. The participants trained over a period of three years and were then followed for two decades.The result that caught everyone’s attention was this: the speed training group showed a 25 percent reduction in the risk of developing dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease. The memory and reasoning groups did not show that same protective effect.But Julie pointed out something most people overlook when they read about this study. The speed training was adaptive, meaning it automatically adjusted its difficulty based on how each person performed...
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    36 m
  • Increasing omega-3s in your food with Chef Martin Oswald

    Increasing omega-3s in your food with Chef Martin Oswald
    Feb 21 2026
    Thank you Marg KJ, Afsi, Lydia R, Tony, and many others for tuning into my live video with Chef Martin Oswald! This week on Habit Healers Live, Chef Martin and I turned brain science into brain food, literally. Inspired by Dr. Dominic Ng’s recommendations for the Brain Health Substack Summit happening next week, Chef Martin prepared two stunning salmon dishes designed to preserve omega-3 fatty acids and pack as many brain-boosting ingredients as possible into every bite.The result? Seven of Dr. Ng’s recommended brain health ingredients in a single recipe. Here’s what we learned.The Science Behind Today’s CookDr. Ng’s brain health food list breaks down into several key categories, and Chef Martin built today’s dishes around them:Gut-Brain Axis: Kimchi, kefir, sauerkraut, and leeks — Chef Martin chose leeks as the foundation for his vegetable sides.Cerebrovascular Blood Flow (or as I put it, “blood to the brain”): Roasted beets, spinach, and kale — beets and spinach both made it into today’s dishes.Neuroinflammation: Extra virgin olive oil, berries, and turmeric — olive oil was used in cooking, and turmeric appeared in the French spice blend.Neuroplasticity: Sardines and anchovies — a Moroccan sardine dish is coming later this week (stay tuned!).Neurotransmitters: Eggs, pumpkin seeds, and turkey — eggs showed up in the gribiche sauce, and crushed pumpkin seeds became the crust on the salmon.Dish #1: Pumpkin Seed-Crusted Salmon with Sauce GribicheChef Martin’s first dish was a thick-cut Atlantic salmon fillet with a crushed pumpkin seed crust, served over water-sautéed leeks, French lentils, beets, and spinach, topped with a classic French sauce gribiche.Key Cooking Tips for Preserving Omega-3sWhy it matters: Omega-3 fatty acids begin to oxidize at around 160°F. The whole goal is to cook salmon slowly at lower heat to preserve these essential brain nutrients.Cook skin-side down first. The skin acts as a protective barrier, shielding the omega-3-rich oils from direct heat. Sear skin-side down for 5–7 minutes on medium heat.Don’t flip too early. If the skin sticks, it’s not ready. When properly cooked, the salmon will release from the pan on its own. Use a stainless steel pan. Chef Martin recommends stainless steel to avoid particles from coated pans breaking off with use.Bring fish to room temperature first. Let salmon sit out for about 30 minutes before cooking. Cold fish won’t cook evenly, it’ll stay raw in the center.Sear the sides. A restaurant trick: briefly press the sides of the salmon against the pan to seal all around. This prevents those white protein spots from forming on top.Use the paper towel trick. After cooking, rest the salmon on a paper towel to absorb the oxidized cooking oil before plating. This is what the best restaurant chefs do.Check temperature: For home cooks, use a thermometer — 125°F is the target for medium-rare salmon that preserves the most omega-3s.Oven method alternative: You can also slow-bake salmon at 250°F for about 45 minutes (for a one-inch fillet). It comes out buttery, creamy, and incredibly nutrient-rich.About Sauce GribicheThe word of the day! Gribiche (G-R-I-B-I-C-H-E) is a classic French sauce made with hard-boiled eggs (for choline and neurotransmitter support), capers, parsley, shallots, mustard, and apple cider vinegar. The acidity of the sauce balances the richness of the salmon, a key flavor profiling principle.The Vegetable SideChef Martin kept this intentionally low-calorie to balance the richness of the fish: leeks cut into strips and water-sautéed (no butter, no oil), French lentils (recommended by Dr. Chris Miller for fiber), pre-cooked beets (for nitrates and cerebrovascular blood flow), and fresh spinach wilted in at the end.Get the full recipe for the Pumpkin Seed–Crusted Salmon with Sauce Gribiche, Roasted Beets & Leeks here. Dish #2: Matcha Salmon Noodle BowlThe second dish was inspired by Dr. Julie Brantantoni’s recommendations. Chef Martin used the belly portions of the salmon, the fattiest part with the highest concentration of omega-3s, cut into small, fingernail-sized pieces and cooked very quickly to avoid oxidizing those delicate fats.What’s in the BowlThe base is konjac noodles (also called sweet potato starch noodles), a great option for anyone managing blood sugar, as they have essentially no carbohydrates. Just rinse with hot water and they’re ready.The star is a matcha dressing made with matcha, tahini, garlic, ginger, and date syrup. Chef Martin’s advice from legendary German chef Witzigmann: when you name a sauce after an ingredient, that ingredient should be the star. Let the matcha shine.Finished with shiitake mushrooms sautéed in a touch of sesame oil (only about 30 calories to flavor an entire dish, compared to 120 calories of olive oil for the same impact), leeks, spinach, hemp seeds (plant-based omega-3s and protein, added at the very end to preserve nutrients), black ...
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    50 m
  • Why Is Pickleball Sending So Many People to the Emergency Room?

    Why Is Pickleball Sending So Many People to the Emergency Room?
    Feb 18 2026

    In this episode, I’m digging into a question that sounds almost absurd until you look at the data: why is pickleball—arguably the “sweetest, safest-looking” sport in the park—sending so many people to the emergency room?

    Pickleball looks harmless. The court is small. The serve is underhand. The ball is basically a wiffle ball. And yet, ER records tell a different story: fractures (especially wrists), sprains, strains, and a pattern that’s hard to ignore—older adults showing up for pickleball injuries at rates that started to rival tennis. I walk through what’s really happening, and why the sport’s design quietly creates the perfect setup for falls, tendon overload, and sudden-stop injuries.

    I explain how two rules—the double bounce and the kitchen—shape the way your body has to move: quick lunges, short sprints, abrupt decelerations, and reactive steps at the net. It doesn’t look like sprinting, but it often acts like sprinting in bursts. And that mismatch—between what the game demands and what many bodies are prepared for—is where trouble starts.

    But I’m not here to villainize pickleball. In fact, I make the case for why it’s one of the most powerful “stealth health” activities out there: it’s fun enough that people actually show up, it can hit moderate intensity, and studies suggest benefits for lower-body power, cognition, and even chronic pain when it’s introduced with a smart ramp-up. The problem isn’t pickleball—it’s the gap between enthusiasm and preparation.

    We also get specific about the injuries that worry clinicians: the Achilles rupture story (tendons adapt slowly, even when you feel “fit”), the rare-but-serious eye injuries that can threaten vision, and the overuse problems the ER doesn’t capture—things like tennis elbow and shoulder tendinopathy that creep in when you play back-to-back without recovery.

    And then I give you the practical fix: how to make pickleball safer without ruining the fun. I walk through a simple warm-up framework (RAMP), the strength and balance basics that reduce fall risk, and the small decisions that matter more than people realize—court shoes, gradual play-time build, rest days, and yes, eye protection if you’re living at the net.

    This isn’t about playing harder. It’s about playing longer.Dr. Marbas Substack: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/

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    16 m
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