Resilience Is Not the Same Thing as Being Unaffected I have mixed feelings about the word resilience. I love what it is supposed to represent: our remarkable human capacity to adapt when circumstances change, recover after difficulty, learn from experience, and continue moving forward when life looks nothing like the version we had planned. Somewhere […]
Sleep Is Not Just Time When You’re Not Doing Anything There is a particular kind of exhaustion that sleep fixes. You stay up too late, the baby wakes up six times, you travel across several time zones, or you have one of those nights when your brain decides that 2:13 a.m. would be an excellent […]
As we wrap up this month’s conversation about brain health, I keep coming back to something I find myself saying to patients almost every day, although I don’t know that I’ve ever actually said it in quite these words. Your brain isn’t asking you to be perfect. It’s asking you to care for it. Those […]
Over the past two weeks we’ve spent quite a bit of time talking about communication. First, we explored the remarkable conversation taking place between the gut and the brain, and then we looked at the language that allows billions of neurons to exchange information every second of every day. We followed electrical impulses as they […]
Last week we introduced the idea that your gut and brain are in constant conversation, and we spent quite a bit of time talking about the gut-brain axis, the vagus nerve, the microbiome, and the many different pathways that allow organs sitting on opposite ends of the body to exchange information all day long. If […]
If you followed along with us through August, you probably noticed that I kept bringing up the brain, even though we were supposedly talking about the gut. At the time, I may have seemed a little distracted, like someone who keeps wandering off topic halfway through a story. I promise there was a reason for […]
The Night I Found a Mushroom Growing Through My Carpet There are certain moments in life that permanently change the way you think about something. For me, one of those moments happened in a condo I owned here in Colorado. I had always thought mold was mostly a problem in humid climates. Florida? Sure. Louisiana? […]
What If Inflammation Isn’t Just Coming From Food? One of the most common conversations I have with patients starts with some version of the same frustration: “I’ve cleaned up my diet.” “I’m exercising regularly.” “I’m taking the supplements.” “So why do I still feel inflamed?” It’s a fair question. Most of us have been taught […]
As the heat of summer draws to a close and the promise of autumn looms on the horizon, August arrives as a perfect time to refocus on our well-being. National Wellness Month, observed throughout August, encourages us to take a step back from our busy lives and prioritize self-care. In a world filled with constant […]
Japanese researchers have shown that being out in nature (what is sometimes referred to as “forest bathing”) improves relaxation and reduces stress. A busy urban environment, which many of us spend most of our days soaking in, has exactly the opposite effects; it can stimulate the fear and anxiety centers in the brain, making you […]