The mindbodygreen Podcast

"Midlife is a perfect time for you to think about where you've been & where you want to go,” says Margie Lachman, PhD. 

Lachman is professor of psychology at Brandeis University and director of the Lifespan Lab. A leading expert on adult development and aging, Lachman is one of a small group of scholars who study midlife from a lifespan developmental perspective. Her honors include research awards from the American Psychological Association (APA) and the Gerontological Society of America. Lachman was a member of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Midlife Development, which launched the landmark Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study. She is a coinvestigator on MIDUS and several other projects exploring cognition, health, and well-being in midlife and later adulthood. 

00:00 - Why midlife is actually prime time

04:37 - The hinge moment & the pivot point

08:08 - Looking back vs. looking ahead

11:16 - The midlife crisis myth, explained

14:24 - Stability, identity, & personality change

18:42 - Traits of people who thrive in midlife

22:55 - What to do in retirement

26:53 - No one wants to look older

29:00 - Emotional regulation gets better with age

31:20 - Resilience, optimism, and sense of control

35:52 - Giving vs receiving in midlife relationships

38:36 - The U-shaped happiness curve is overstated

41:32 - Cognitive peak in midlife

40:36 - How your mindset can be anti-inflammatory

44:30 - Exercise as a panacea for health 

Referenced in the episode: 

Buy Lachman’s book here:

For more about the MIDUS study, visit: https://midus.wisc.edu/

Patent holder study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733322001500 

We hope you enjoy this episode, and feel free to watch the full video on YouTube! Whether it's an article or podcast, we want to know what we can do to help here at mindbodygreen. Let us know at: podcast@mindbodygreen.com.
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"There is no one magic test for brain health,” says Richard Isaacson, MD.

  

Isaacson is a Harvard-trained neurologist who directs the Precision Prevention Program at Atria Health and Research Institute and founded the world's first Alzheimer's Prevention Clinic at Weill Cornell Medicine/NewYork-Presbyterian. A leader in precision-medicine approaches to Alzheimer's risk reduction, he has served as principal investigator for multiple research initiatives focused on individualized care. He recently led an NIH-funded clinical trial showing that a free online tool (RetainYourBrain.com) reduced Alzheimer's risk by 16% in six months, and is working to democratize brain health testing through an at-home, lower-cost blood biomarker test (AlzLabs.org).

Show notes:

00:00 - What we don’t know about Alzheimer’s

04:49 - Where to start with Alzheimer’s risk

06:55 - Lifestyle first: optimizing what you can control

10:39 - Using wearables & health tech for brain health

16:19 – Why there's no perfect blood test for the brain

29:06 - Cutting through the information noise

31:10 - Steps to take when symptoms appear

35:37 - Is it actually memory loss?

38:54 - The future of Alzheimer’s testing

Referenced in the episode: 

Free cognitive risk & assessment tools: retainyourbrain.com

Free information about blood biomarkers: ind.org/bloodtest  

Free information about home testing: alzlabs.org We hope you enjoy this episode, and feel free to watch the full video on YouTube! Whether it's an article or podcast, we want to know what we can do to help here at mindbodygreen. Let us know at: podcast@mindbodygreen.com.
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"You shouldn't be spending more than five minutes in there at a time,” says Trisha Pasricha, MD, MPH.

A graduate of Harvard College, Pasricha earned her medical degree from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and a Master of Public Health from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her training includes an internal medicine residency at The Johns Hopkins Hospital and gastroenterology and motility fellowships at Massachusetts General Hospital. Currently, Pasricha is an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of the Institute for Gut-Brain Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, an NIH-funded research laboratory at the forefront of gut-brain science. Her book, You've Been Pooping All Wrong, is out now. 

00:00 - What actually makes a bowel movement healthy

07:55 - The Bristol Stool Chart explained

10:50 - The case for bidets

14:49 - What hemorrhoids actually are

17:44 - The smartphone-hemorrhoid study

20:33 - Fiber timing & psyllium husk

24:03 - The rise in early-onset colorectal cancer

27:43 - Microbiome testing

30:03 - The future of gut health

32:33 - Why we can't poop when traveling

35:40 - How much gas is actually normal

38:01 - Runners with the runs

41:10 - How to overhaul your gut in 30 days

Referenced in the episode: 

For more about Pasricha, visit her website: https://www.trishapasricha.com/ 

Buy Pasricha’s book here: https://a.co/d/0gZZImBR 

Smartphone usage on the toilet study: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12407481/ 

We hope you enjoy this episode, and feel free to watch the full video on YouTube! Whether it's an article or podcast, we want to know what we can do to help here at mindbodygreen. Let us know at: podcast@mindbodygreen.com.
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"Almost all of the interventions that make us happier work because they make us feel more connected and more loved,’ says Sonja Lyubomirsky, Ph.D.

Lyubomirsky is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Riverside, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the bestselling author of The How of Happiness and The Myths of Happiness—and her latest, How to Feel Loved (Harper Collins, 2026), paired with a mainstage TED talk. A Harvard and Stanford-trained scientist whose research has been featured in the New York Times, on podcasts, and in documentaries worldwide, she is one of the world's leading experts on the science of happiness

00:00 - What connects every happiness practice

03:24 - Why you should talk to strangers

04:41 - Kindness changes your DNA

08:32 - Money, power, & fame are overrated

10:36 - The case for reaching out to old friends

13:49 - Why 70% don't feel loved enough

17:03 - The walls we walk around with

18:52 - The radical curiosity mindset

23:55 - How to really listen 

28:19 - AI as a companion

31:05 - The relationship SEAsaw

39:00 - When introverts act extroverted

43:40 - The conversation to have tomorrow

Referenced in the episode: 

For more about Lyubomirsky & her research, visit her website: https://sonjalyubomirsky.com/ 

Buy her new book: https://a.co/d/04sCyQSj 

Listen to her mainstage TED talk: https://youtu.be/pdRWeK9f02w?si=1vV8cwwsSHeCMZ3y 

For more about Nicholas Epley’s research & upcoming book, visit his website: https://www.nicholasepley.com/ We hope you enjoy this episode, and feel free to watch the full video on YouTube! Whether it's an article or podcast, we want to know what we can do to help here at mindbodygreen. Let us know at: podcast@mindbodygreen.com.
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“Placebo effects are real and mind-body effects are real, and there's a fairly large scientific literature on these things,” says Joshua W. Brown, Ph.D.

Brown is a professor of Psychological and Brain Science at Indiana University, where he directs the Cognitive Control Lab. He also co-founded the Global Medical Research Institute With decades of experience in computational neuroscience and over 79 peer-reviewed publications, he brings the same rigorous scientific methodology to extraordinary claims of healing that he applies to understanding the brain.

00:00 - A neuroscientist's brain tumor diagnosis

07:29 - Prayer with expectation

10:43 - The biology of belief

12:13 - Inside the Global Medical Research Institute

17:14 - Even known placebos still work

20:27 - The science of miracles 

24:10 - Conversion disorders & the mind-body line

32:02 - The brain is a prediction machine

38:02 - How chronic stress writes itself into the body

41:18 - Why "just believe" doesn't work

43:22 - Healing happens in community

47:16 - When neuroscience met the Dalai Lama

50:26 - The morning practice that grounds his day

Referenced in the episode: 

To learn more about Brown, visit his website: https://joshbrownneuro.com/ 

Buy Brown’s book here: https://a.co/d/07qL3LKj 

To learn more Brown’s research, or to report your own miracle, visit the Global Medical Research Institute website: https://www.globalmri.org/ We hope you enjoy this episode, and feel free to watch the full video on YouTube! Whether it's an article or podcast, we want to know what we can do to help here at mindbodygreen. Let us know at: podcast@mindbodygreen.com.

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