The Habit Healers

Why does some people’s strength training transform their body while yours just leaves you sore? If you’ve ever wondered why your workouts aren’t working, this episode is for you. I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, and today on The Habit Healers Podcast I’m using one of the oldest crafts on earth, blacksmithing, to explain exactly how your body builds muscle, energy, and strength at any age.The science of building muscle runs on the same cycle a smith uses at the forge: a training signal, the biological remodeling that follows, and the recovery phase where the change actually sets. Most people pour everything into the first two and cut the third one short. That’s the mistake we fix today. I walk you through why mechanical tension, not time on the treadmill, is what tells your muscles to grow, why your first month of strength gains comes from your nervous system before your muscles ever change size, and why recovery is the step that turns effort into something that lasts.And if you’re over 50, 60, or 70, here’s the part I most want you to hear: the largest review ever done on this confirms your body can still build new muscle and mitochondria, regardless of age, sex, or menopause.In this episode, you’ll learn:* Why resistance training, not cardio alone, sends the real signal to build muscle after 50* How progressive overload refines your body the way repeated forge cycles refine steel* Why the protein synthesis and recovery window means spacing sessions 48 hours apart* How sleep drives the muscle repair and growth hormone release you can’t train without* The early warning signs of overtraining and what to do when you see them* A simple 4-week plan to start or restart strength training the right wayDr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/there-are-only-three-steps-betweenCheck out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/about Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

Chronic inflammation is one of the biggest hidden drivers of aging, heart disease, and metabolic decline, and most of us have no idea where we stand. In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I’m walking you through “inflammaging,” the slow, silent rise in inflammation that accumulates as we age, using a surprising parallel from nature that finally makes the whole process click.I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, and what I want you to understand today is that the inflammatory molecules damaging your tissues are the same ones that protect you when you’re sick or injured. The difference is the dose. We’ll talk about why one population with the highest inflammation researchers have ever measured also has the healthiest hearts on Earth, why the same molecule from exercise heals you while the same molecule from belly fat harms you, and why your blood markers may not budge for months after you start doing the right things. Then I’ll give you a clear, practical protocol you can actually follow.In this episode, you’ll learn:* What inflammaging is and how chronic inflammation accelerates aging and heart disease* How to measure your own inflammation with a simple hs-CRP test and waist measurement* Why visceral fat acts like a faucet feeding low-grade inflammation* How an anti-inflammatory, Mediterranean and plant-predominant diet lowers your markers* Why exercise and muscle are your body’s natural anti-inflammatory filtration system* How long it really takes to see results, and why the lag is normalDr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/this-type-of-inflammation-slows-agingCheck out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/about Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

Loneliness is now considered a health risk on the level of smoking, and most of us have no idea how much modern life has quietly stripped human connection out of our days. In this episode, I break down what social disconnection actually does to your body, and the nine small habits that can rebuild it.We’ve engineered face-to-face contact out of almost everything: banking, groceries, work. Each change solved a real problem, and each one removed a small moment of connection. But the research here is striking. People with stronger social connection have a 50% greater likelihood of survival, and that effect is largest for people woven into a community, not just those who live with someone. On the other side, social isolation is linked to chronic inflammation, the same low-grade stress response tied to heart disease, metabolic dysfunction, and dementia.The good news is that the fix is made of tiny, repeatable behaviors. I walk you through all nine, from a daily appreciation text to the surprising power of weak ties, why we underestimate how much connection helps, and how to actually start this Monday.What you’ll learn in this episode:* Why social connection rivals smoking and high blood pressure as a longevity factor* How social isolation drives chronic inflammation and long-term disease risk* The prediction error that keeps us from reaching out, even when we want to* Why weak ties and small interactions boost happiness and belonging* Nine simple, science-backed habits to feel less lonely and more connected* How to pick one habit and make it stick for seven daysDr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/what-if-nine-two-minute-habits-gaveCheck out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/about Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

If your brain won’t stop thinking about food, even when you’re not hungry, you’re experiencing something researchers now call food noise. In this episode, I explain what food noise actually is, why GLP-1 medications like Ozempic and Mounjaro quiet it, and how to turn down the volume naturally, with or without medication.For years, constant thoughts about food got blamed on willpower and poor self-control. The science tells a different story. Food noise is a gain problem in the brain’s reward system, more like tinnitus than hunger, and I’ll walk you through the surprising research that proves it, including a study that measured the actual brain frequency of food preoccupation. I’ll also explain why GLP-1 drugs like semaglutide and tirzepatide work more like masking than a cure, why food noise often returns when people stop the medication, and what the latest research says about building habits that last. If you’ve ever felt like food cravings and intrusive food thoughts run in the background of your whole day, this one is for you.What you’ll learn:* What food noise really is, and why it feels different from normal hunger* How GLP-1 medications like Ozempic quiet food noise, and why the effect can fade* The tinnitus and “central gain” connection that explains intrusive food thoughts* How ultra-processed foods crank up your brain’s reward system* Five science-backed ways to reduce food cravings and food noise naturally* Why food noise was never a character flaw, and how to retrain your brainDr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/your-brain-has-a-volume-knob-forCheck out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/about Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

Your sense of smell may be one of the earliest warning signs for brain health and cognitive decline, and almost no one is paying attention to it. In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I explain why smell training could be one of the simplest things you do for your brain.I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, and in this episode I walk you through the surprising science connecting your nose to your memory. Smell is the only sense with a direct pathway to the brain’s memory center, the same regions Alzheimer’s disease tends to damage first. Research shows that a declining sense of smell can predict dementia risk years before symptoms appear, and that olfactory training, the simple practice of actively sniffing a few familiar scents each day, may strengthen those vulnerable brain regions. We look at what the studies on essential oils, smell training, and brain plasticity actually found, where the evidence is strong, and where it’s still early. Then I give you a practical two-minute smell practice you can start today with four jars and a few minutes of focus.Here’s what you’ll learn in this episode:* Why your sense of smell is a direct line to memory and emotion in the brain* How a declining sense of smell can be an early warning sign of cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease* What the research on smell training and olfactory enrichment shows about brain health* The surprising link between scent, inflammation, and the immune system* A simple two-minute smell practice using four scents you may already have at home* When a sudden loss of smell is worth talking to your doctor aboutDr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/what-if-the-first-sign-of-alzheimersCheck out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/about Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

I have a confession. When someone describes a baked good as “healthy,” my expectations drop. I start picturing dense, dry things that taste like obligation. The kind of food you eat because you should, not because you actually want to.This week’s live cooking session with Chef Martin Oswald changed that. He walked the audience through a muffin recipe where every ingredient pulls double duty, and I spent the rest of the day thinking about it because it was flat-out delicious.It started with a bag of sunflower seeds.Most people walk right past sunflower seeds at the store. They’re not glamorous like cashews or trendy like almonds. But sunflower seeds are the cheapest nut or seed you can buy, and they’re rich in vitamin E and antioxidants that help protect your DNA by neutralizing free radicals. When you blend them with water in a high-powered blender, they turn into a creamy seed butter that replaces dairy butter in baking. And by the time you account for the water, that seed butter actually costs less than the dairy butter it replaces, while also delivering protein and fiber.Every Ingredient Doing Double DutyEvery ingredient in this recipe has to earn its place twice.The ground flaxseed mixed with water becomes a flax egg that replaces the binding power of a regular egg, but flaxseed also brings omega-3 fatty acids and fiber to the muffin. The apple puree adds moisture and natural sweetness, and the pectin in the apple skin acts as a natural gelling agent that holds everything together. I pointed out during the session that pectin also binds cholesterol in your digestive tract when you eat it.The apple cider vinegar sounds alarming in a muffin, but it reacts with the baking soda to help the muffin rise, and it adds a depth of flavor you can’t quite identify but would miss if it weren’t there. Martin mentioned that old grandmother recipes often include it, and you’ll never taste it in the finished product.The sweetener is whole dates, blended right into the wet ingredients. Martin was honest with the audience about the balance involved. If you’re managing diabetes or actively trying to lose weight, you might use fewer dates. You want enough sweetness to enjoy the muffin, but not so much that it works against you.A Few Techniques Worth Watching the Replay ForMartin toasted the sunflower seeds before anything else, at low heat for about eight minutes, until they were just lightly golden rather than dark brown the way you’d toast hazelnuts. Even though the seeds will bake inside the muffin, pre-toasting gives them a completely different flavor. He challenged the audience to try one muffin with toasted seeds and one without.He sifted the whole wheat flour before mixing it with the baking powder and baking soda, not to remove the fiber or make it behave like white flour, but to aerate it. Sifting breaks up the clumps and introduces air, which helps the muffin rise more evenly in the oven.Martin also tasted the batter partway through and realized he’d forgotten the vanilla. Chefs taste constantly while they cook, not because they’re hungry, but because tasting is the only reliable way to catch what’s missing, and even an experienced professional forgets things.When he mixed the wet and dry ingredients by hand, he stressed scraping from the bottom of the bowl each time. Flour accumulates at the bottom and in the corners, and if you don’t scoop it out, you end up with dry pockets in your muffins. Clean the bowl, he kept saying. Always clean the bowl.No Squishy MuffinsMartin declared this the “no squishy muffin zone.” He wants every bite to have something to encounter, a crunch or a chew that keeps things interesting.He folded whole toasted sunflower seeds and dried barberries into the finished batter. Barberries are a less common choice than raisins, but Martin prefers them because they contain berberine, a compound that research has connected to blood sugar regulation. He also mentioned that you could swap in diced dried apricots or prunes, and that prunes in particular work well for anyone dealing with digestive issues.The Macerated Apricot ToppingWhile the muffins baked for 25 minutes, Martin demonstrated a macerated apricot topping that brought the whole thing to restaurant level.Macerating fruit means tossing sliced fruit with a little sweetener and citrus to draw out the natural juices. Martin sliced fresh apricots thin, emphasizing that the slices need enough surface area to actually release their juice. He tossed them with about two teaspoons of maple syrup and a squeeze of fresh lemon, then let everything sit while the muffins baked.Then he took a single leaf of fresh basil, rolled it tightly and sliced it into thin ribbons before folding them into the apricots. Most people wouldn’t think of basil in a dessert, but Martin told the audience it’s common in high-end restaurant kitchens. The amount is tiny, just a few ribbons, but it creates a flavor you notice without being able to name.He plated the finished muffin with the macerated apricots and a dollop of vanilla plant-based yogurt, finishing with barberries scattered on top and a drizzle of the apricot juice right onto the cut muffin. I wanted to reach through the screen.The Recipe at a GlanceThe full recipe with exact measurements has been published on Chef Martin’s Substack. For those of you who were taking notes during the live, here’s what went into the muffins.The wet ingredients all go into a high-powered blender and get pureed until smooth. Martin used one cup of toasted sunflower seeds, one cup of water, three tablespoons of ground flaxseed, three-quarters of a cup of apple puree (made with the peel on for pectin), one cup of pitted dates, a splash of apple cider vinegar, and about two tablespoons of vanilla extract.The dry ingredients get sifted and mixed separately. He used one and a quarter cups of whole wheat flour, half a teaspoon of baking soda, and two teaspoons of baking powder.Fold the wet into the dry by hand, scraping the bowl as you go. Add whole toasted sunflower seeds and a couple tablespoons of dried barberries for texture. Spoon into muffin cups (Martin recommended a light spray of natural oil or using silicone molds to prevent sticking), tap the tin gently to release air pockets, and bake for 25 minutes.For the macerated apricot topping, slice fresh apricots thin, toss with maple syrup and lemon juice, add thin ribbons of fresh basil, and let sit for 20 to 30 minutes.If You Need to Adapt the RecipeIf you don’t have a high-powered blender like a Vitamix, you can substitute store-bought sunflower seed butter for the whole sunflower seeds. Cashew butter works similarly, though the flavor will shift a bit. Peanut butter is another option, though Martin noted it changes the recipe more.For a gluten-free version, he recommended using a quality gluten-free flour blend, one that combines multiple flours rather than relying on rice flour alone, and adding psyllium husk as a binder. Without gluten, the muffin needs something else to hold it together, and psyllium husk creates a gel when it contacts liquid that does exactly that.Why This One MattersI spend a lot of time thinking about what makes a recipe actually sustainable for people working on their metabolic health. A recipe can taste amazing, but if it costs too much or spikes your blood sugar or takes all afternoon, you’re not going to make it twice. This muffin doesn’t have any of those problems. Sunflower seeds are the cheapest option in the nut and seed aisle, and dates provide sweetness without refined sugar. The whole wheat flour and flaxseed bring fiber that slows glucose absorption. The whole thing comes together in about 35 minutes, bake time included.If you want to watch the full session and see Martin walk through every step, the video replay is right above this article.And if this kind of recipe is what you’ve been looking for, I’d love for you to join us inside The Habit Healers community on Skool. We built it around reversing insulin resistance, and it includes the Insulin Resistance Reversal Roadmap course to guide you through the process, Chef Martin’s full Healing Kitchen recipe vault with all of his cooking videos and recipes, and my weekly live Tuesday sessions where we dig into the science behind metabolic health. It’s the place where recipes like this one connect to the bigger picture of getting your health back. Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

Why are so many healthy, active women being diagnosed with atrial fibrillation? If you or someone you love recently got an AFib diagnosis and can’t understand why, this episode is for you.In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I answer a letter from a longtime reader: three active women in their seventies, all diagnosed with afib in the same year, all already eating well and staying active. I walk through why atrial fibrillation is reaching people who seem to be doing everything right, and why the usual risk-factor list doesn’t tell the whole story. We get into the hidden drivers of AFib that so often get missed, including blood pressure that looks normal but isn’t, visceral and epicardial fat, alcohol, sleep apnea in women, subclinical thyroid changes, blood sugar, and the surprising link between high-volume endurance exercise and heart rhythm problems. I also explain why afib in women is diagnosed so late, what menopause has to do with it, and most importantly, what the research actually shows about improving your rhythm through lifestyle, even after a diagnosis.What you’ll learn in this episode:* Why atrial fibrillation is rising in healthy, active people and postmenopausal women* The hidden AFib risk factors that most people, and even some doctors, miss* How blood pressure, visceral fat, alcohol, and sleep apnea quietly drive heart rhythm problems* Why high-volume endurance exercise can actually increase afib risk* What the LEGACY and ARREST-AF studies reveal about reversing afib naturally through lifestyle changes* Why the first 90 days after an AFib diagnosis matter more than you’d thinkDr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/what-are-the-atrial-fibrillationCheck out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/about Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

After 50 years of eating plant-based, my guest, Victoria Moran, was already doing almost everything right, and her cholesterol still had room to drop. Then she added four specific things to her plate, and her total cholesterol fell from 156 to 127. No statin.In my practice, I hear the same frustration constantly: "I eat clean, so why are my numbers stuck?" Victoria's story shows that the Portfolio Diet, a food-first approach developed by Dr. David Jenkins, can move the needle even for people who think they have already maxed out their diets. This is also a conversation about aging well, because at 76, Victoria is living proof, and her own yoga teacher is 101 and still teaching a class every week.Victoria's Website: https://www.victoriamoran.com Main Street Vegan Academy: https://www.mainstreetvegan.com Victoria's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/VictoriaMoranNYC Dr. Marbas Substack: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/Check out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/about Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

Your doctor said your bloodwork looks normal. But normal only describes what they actually tested. In this episode I walk you through eight tests your annual physical almost never includes, four blood markers and four at-home assessments, that reveal not just where your health stands but where it’s heading.We start with the blood tests your standard panel leaves off. I explain why fasting insulin and HOMA-IR can flag insulin resistance years before your glucose ever moves, why ApoB counts the particles that actually drive cardiovascular risk while LDL only measures the cargo, why Lp(a) is a once-in-a-lifetime genetic test that one in five people need, and why hsCRP catches the inflammation half of heart disease that cholesterol numbers miss entirely. Then we shift to four things you can measure in your living room in under five minutes: grip strength, single-leg balance, gait speed, and the chair sit-to-stand. Each one has been tied in large studies to how well you’re aging, and not one shows up at a routine visit.This is the conversation I wish every patient could have before they walk in for their next physical.What you’ll learn:* Why fasting insulin and HOMA-IR detect insulin resistance long before standard glucose tests* How ApoB and Lp(a) sharpen your true cardiovascular risk beyond LDL cholesterol* What hsCRP reveals about inflammation and heart health* Four at-home longevity tests: grip strength, balance, gait speed, and sit-to-stand* The exact metabolic health markers to request at your next appointmentDr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/what-are-the-8-tests-your-doctorCheck out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/about Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

What if you could stay strong, steady, and independent as you age without ever setting foot in a gym? In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I break down the science of NEAT, non-exercise activity thermogenesis, and exercise snacking, and how tiny bursts of movement woven into your day can lower your risk of early death as much as a structured workout.I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, and one of the most freeing things I’ve learned in lifestyle medicine is that staying fit as you age isn’t really about willpower or gym memberships. The research shows that a few minutes of movement scattered through your normal day, while the kettle heats, while the microwave runs, while you carry groceries in from the car, can protect your heart, your blood sugar, your balance, and your ability to live on your own terms for decades. I walk you through nine simple movements you can anchor to routines you already have, from calf raises at the counter to a bathroom squat to a one-leg balance, each one targeting a quality that predicts how well you’ll age. You don’t need all nine. You just need one. Let’s talk about what the science actually says.What you’ll learn in this episode:* Why NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis) burns more daily calories than exercise for most people* How just three and a half minutes of daily movement can lower all-cause and cardiovascular mortality risk* The exercise snacking approach to balancing blood sugar and improving insulin sensitivity* Simple functional fitness moves for strength, balance, and fall prevention as you age* Why grip strength is one of the strongest predictors of longevity and healthy aging* How to anchor a new movement habit to a routine you already have so it actually lastsDr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/what-if-the-best-workout-you-couldCheck out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/about Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

Your morning blood sugar might be climbing before you even get out of bed, and the order you do things next can either calm it down or send it higher. In this episode I walk you through the morning blood sugar stack, a simple way to rearrange the morning you already have.If you’ve ever wondered why your blood sugar runs high in the morning, the answer starts with something called the dawn phenomenon, your body’s natural pre-wake surge of glucose. The good news is you have more control than you think. I break down what the research actually says about coffee and blood sugar, why drinking it before food can blunt how your body handles sugar, and why waiting until after breakfast matters. We talk about meal sequencing, the simple habit of eating protein and vegetables before carbs, and how it can sharply cut post-meal blood sugar spikes. I also cover hydration, a short post-meal walk, front-loading your calories at breakfast, and a few surprising factors like gum health that quietly affect insulin resistance. None of this asks you to add time to your morning. It just asks you to reorder it.In this episode you’ll learn:* Why morning blood sugar is naturally highest, and what the dawn phenomenon really is* How coffee and blood sugar interact, and the best time to drink your morning cup* The meal sequencing trick of eating protein and vegetables before carbs to reduce blood sugar spikes* Why morning hydration and a short post-meal walk support healthy glucose* How front-loading calories at breakfast can improve insulin sensitivity and metabolic health* Simple ways to use a continuous glucose monitor to test what works for your bodyDr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/what-if-your-morning-coffee-is-spikingCheck out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/about Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

Can you lower thyroid antibodies naturally, or is Hashimoto’s thyroiditis just something you have to live with? After thirty years with this disease, here’s what I’ve learned: the answer lives in an unexpected place, a coral reef.In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, and I’m sharing the framework that finally made sense of my own diagnosis, and later my son’s. Hashimoto’s is the most common autoimmune disease in the world, affecting roughly one in thirteen adults, yet most people walk out of the doctor’s office with a levothyroxine prescription and almost nothing else. That prescription is necessary, but it does nothing about why the immune system is attacking the gland in the first place. Just like marine biologists learned you cannot fix bleached coral by treating the coral, you have to fix the ocean around it. I’ll walk you through what that means for your thyroid, including why postpartum thyroiditis blindsides so many new moms, how the gut-thyroid axis quietly drives inflammation, and the five evidence-based levers that target the immune environment instead of the gland. This is lifestyle medicine grounded in the actual research, with no hype and no false promises.What you’ll learn in this episode:* Why hypothyroidism and rising TPO antibodies often start years before symptoms appear* How selenium and vitamin D can help lower thyroid antibodies naturally* The gut-thyroid axis and what it means for inflammation and autoimmune thyroid disease* Why postpartum thyroiditis happens and who’s most at risk* How a plant-based diet can quietly cause iodine deficiency, and how to prevent it* What “remission” realistically looks like with Hashimoto’sDr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/is-your-thyroid-medication-enoughCheck out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/about Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

I want you to try something right now. Sit down in a chair. Now stand back up. Did your hands go to your thighs to push yourself up? Did you lean forward and rock a little to build momentum?If so, you are not alone. And you just identified exactly why this week’s Substack Live with my friend Maxime Sigouin matters so much.Maxime has been in the fitness space for over a decade. He has helped more than 1,200 people transform their bodies, written a book on fitness and body composition, and built a coaching practice specifically focused on people over 50 who are losing muscle mass and bone density. I did his program myself about two and a half years ago, and I can tell you firsthand that his approach changed how I think about movement entirely.What Maxime walked us through in this session are the five compound exercises that translate directly to the movements your body needs to perform every single day. Getting up from a chair. Picking up a box from the floor. Putting something on a high shelf. Pushing open a heavy door. These are the movements that start to fail as we lose muscle, and once they go, independence goes with them.If you watched the live session, this article will give you a written reference you can come back to whenever you need a refresher on form and cues. If you missed it, the replay is right above this post.What Makes These Five Exercises DifferentMost people think of exercise in gym terms. Machines with cables, mirrors on every wall, someone counting reps in your ear. But Maxime’s starting question is different. He asks what your body actually needs to do in real life, and then he builds the training around that.The five movements he demonstrated are all compound exercises, meaning they involve multiple joints working together at the same time. A push-up uses your shoulder and your elbow. A squat works your hips, your knees, and your ankles all at once. This is the opposite of an isolation exercise like a bicep curl, which only bends one joint.Why does that matter? Because nothing you do in your daily life involves one joint. When you bend down to pick up a grandchild, you are hinging at the hips, bending at the knees, bracing through your core, and gripping with your hands all at the same time. Training that way builds strength the way your body actually uses it.The One Cue That Runs Through EverythingBefore Maxime even picked up a weight, he spent time on the single most important technique that applies to every exercise he demonstrated. Core engagement.And he did not mean sucking in your stomach or crunching forward like you are doing a sit-up. His instructions were specific. Draw your belly button inward, then do a Kegel. That second part is the one most people skip. If you have ever had to find a bathroom urgently and had to hold it, you know the muscle contraction he is talking about. That combination of pulling in and holding creates a brace around your midsection that protects your lower back during every movement.The key, he emphasized, is that you should still be able to breathe while holding that tension. Most people hold their breath the moment they engage their core, and as Maxime put it, they start turning blue after about ten seconds. The goal is to maintain that brace while breathing normally through the movement.He also explained that if you skip this step, the tension has to go somewhere. It is either going into your core muscles at the front of your body, or it is going into your lower back. You get to choose. And for every one of these five exercises, the answer should always be your core.The SquatThis is the one that matters most as you age. Your ability to get up from a chair, climb stairs, and catch your balance when you stumble all depends on leg strength. And if you fall and fracture something after 50, the recovery timeline is dramatically different than it was when you were twenty.Maxime broke the squat down into pieces. Feet about shoulder width apart, toes pointed outward at roughly fifteen degrees. That small angle helps engage your glutes and hamstrings, which are the primary muscles doing the work. As you lower, you are sending your hips backward at roughly a forty-five degree angle while pushing your knees outward. You go down to ninety degrees, then squeeze your glutes to come back up.One detail he kept coming back to is what happens with your knees. Your body will always find the path of least resistance, and for most people, that means the knees want to buckle inward as you squat. Pushing them outward throughout the entire movement is what ensures you are actually working the right muscles and not putting damaging pressure on the knee joint.For the beginner version, he grabbed a chair and placed it behind him. The goal is to lower yourself until you lightly touch the seat, then stand back up without releasing all the tension at the bottom. You are not sitting down and resting. You are tapping the chair as a depth marker and driving right back up. If even that is too challenging, stand next to your kitchen counter and hold on for support while you build the strength.The intermediate version adds dumbbells held at the shoulders. Same movement, same cues, just added resistance. And for the advanced version, Maxime demonstrated a goblet squat, holding a heavier dumbbell close to the chest. Keeping the weight tight to your body matters because the farther a weight drifts from your center of gravity, the more your lower back has to compensate.I asked him about going below ninety degrees, and his answer was practical. You can, but only if your form is flawless first. If your knees track outward properly the entire time and your heels stay flat on the ground, you can explore deeper range. But if going lower means coming up on your toes or letting your knees cave in, you are better off staying at ninety and adding more weight to increase the challenge.I also mentioned that I have used a resistance band around my knees during squats to help with that outward tracking. Maxime agreed it works but recommended using a lighter band for this purpose. If you grab a heavy band, you are adding significant difficulty to the exercise itself rather than just reinforcing the knee position.The DeadliftThis is the one that saves your back. Every time you pick something up from the floor, you are performing some version of a deadlift. And this is where most people get injured, because they round their shoulders forward and let all the load transfer to their lower back.The deadlift looks similar to the squat in the lower body, but instead of pushing weight, you are pulling it. Maxime started from a standing position since most people doing this at home will use dumbbells rather than a barbell. The movement begins with a hip hinge, sending the hips backward while keeping the back straight. Once the hands reach the knees, the lower portion becomes a squat. Coming back up, you squat to clear the knees, then drive the hips forward like a hip thrust to finish standing.The critical detail here is shoulder position. Maxime demonstrated how people instinctively round their shoulders forward to try to reach lower, thinking further means better. Instead, he had us pull the shoulders back and down, locking them into the ball-and-socket joint. This limits how far down you can reach, which is actually the point. It prevents you from cheating the movement with your back and keeps the work where it belongs, in the legs and glutes.For the beginner version, you can practice the motion with no weight at all. Maxime even suggested grabbing a light box and placing it on a couch cushion to simulate picking something up from the ground, because that is what this exercise is really training you for. The intermediate and advanced versions simply increase the dumbbell weight.He also explained the Romanian deadlift, which several people asked about. The key difference is that the Romanian version is a hinge all the way through rather than switching to a squat at the bottom. You maintain a slight knee bend and hinge forward until the dumbbells pass your knees, then drive back up. This variation puts more emphasis on the hamstrings, while the standard deadlift works the glutes more because of that squatting component at the bottom.One cue he gave for both versions is to drag the weights along your legs the entire time. The moment the dumbbells drift away from your body, all that load shifts to your lower back. Keeping them in contact with your legs is what protects your spine.The Push-Up and Chest PressMaxime started this one with a question that reframed the entire exercise. When you push open a door, what angle are your arms at? Nobody pushes a door with their elbows flared straight out to the sides. You push with your arms at roughly a forty-five degree angle to your body. That is the angle your push-up should use too.He had us find our own hand position by lying on the ground and placing our hands wherever felt most natural beside our chest. Everyone has different shoulder widths and arm lengths, so there is no single correct hand placement. But that forty-five degree angle between the arm and the torso should feel familiar because it mirrors how you actually push things in real life.The progression he laid out for beginners was smart. If a regular push-up is too hard, start against a wall. Same form, same angles, just a much lighter load. When the wall gets easy, move to the kitchen counter. When that gets easy, use a chair or bench. Then move to the floor on your knees. Then a full push-up. Each step slightly increases the percentage of your bodyweight you are pressing.He recommended ten to twenty repetitions for the chest, with a good reason behind that range. Rarely in your daily life will you need to push something incredibly heavy a single time. What you need is the muscular endurance to push and lift things repeatedly throughout the day.For people with wrist issues, he offered the floor chest press as an alternative. Lying on your back with dumbbells, you press them up until they lightly touch at the top, then lower them back down at a forty-five degree angle until they lightly touch the ground. The key word there is lightly. You never release the tension at the bottom. And Maxime had one of his memorable coaching analogies for the top of the movement. Pretend there is an orange between your chest muscles, and squeeze it hard enough to make orange juice. That squeeze at the top is what ensures the chest is actually doing the work.The mistake he sees most often, whether on push-ups or chest press, is people trying to get extra range of motion by letting their shoulders roll forward. Those extra two or three inches at the top feel like you are working harder, but all that tension is going into the front of your shoulder, into the ligaments and tendons, not into the chest muscle you are trying to strengthen. Keep the shoulders locked back and down, and accept the slightly shorter range of motion. It is doing far more for you.The Bent-Over RowThis exercise balances out all the pushing you do with the chest and shoulders. If you only train the front of your body, you end up with that rounded, hunched-forward posture that becomes harder to reverse the longer you let it develop.The starting position is a hip hinge, leaning forward past forty-five degrees with a slight bend in the knees. Your arms hang straight down in front of you with the weights. And here is where Maxime’s coaching really clicked for the audience. Your hands, he said, are just hooks. They are not doing the pulling. If he could duct-tape the dumbbells to your wrists, the exercise would feel exactly the same, because this is a back exercise, not an arm exercise.To initiate the pull, he used an image that stuck with me. Imagine there is a string attached to the back of each elbow, and someone behind you is pulling those strings. You are not muscling the weights up with your biceps. You are driving your elbows backward and squeezing your shoulder blades together.Then came the orange juice analogy again. This time the orange is between your shoulder blades. Pull those elbows back, squeeze the orange, make the juice. The squeeze at the top is where the real work happens.Where you pull the weight matters too. Pulling up toward your chest turns it into more of an upper-back exercise. Maxime recommended pulling to about belly button level, which engages the largest section of the back musculature and gives you the most benefit from a single exercise.For beginners who do not yet have the lower back strength to hold the hinged position for ten to fifteen repetitions, he suggested using a resistance band anchored to a door handle. You can perform the exact same pulling motion while standing upright, which removes the lower back demand entirely until you build up to the full bent-over version.The Shoulder PressThe final exercise covers overhead pressing, the movement you use every time you put something on a high shelf, lift a suitcase into an overhead bin, or hoist a box above your head.Maxime started with a practical observation. He has never in his life picked up a box with his arms flared straight out to the sides. Nobody has. You always hold things close, with your arms at about forty-five degrees in front of you. That is your starting position for the press.From there, you push the dumbbells upward, and as they pass the ninety-degree mark at your elbows, you begin to rotate them outward so that you finish with the weights touching directly on top of your head. Not in front of your head. Directly above it. If you dropped the weight from the top position, it should land right on your skull. A vivid cue, though he was quick to add that you should not actually test that one at home.The reason for finishing directly overhead is the same principle that runs through every exercise in this session. If the weight finishes in front of you, your lower back has to compensate for the load being away from your center of gravity. Directly overhead means the weight stacks over your spine, and your skeleton supports it rather than your back muscles straining to hold it in place.For beginners, no weights at all. Maxime shared a combination workout he calls “prison push-ups” that he has led on cruises. You do one push-up on your knees, then one shoulder press with no weight. Then two of each. Then three. All the way up to ten, and then back down to zero. By the end of that sequence, even with zero weight, people cannot lift their arms for one more press. Bodyweight alone is more than enough to get started.What Connects All FiveIf you watched Maxime work through these exercises, you probably noticed the same cues coming up over and over. Core tight on every movement. Shoulders pulled back and locked into the joint. Knees tracking outward on the lower body exercises. No overextending at the end of any range of motion. These are not five separate exercises so much as one integrated approach to keeping your body functional and protected.The other theme that ran through the session was starting where you actually are, not where you think you should be. Wall push-ups are real push-ups. Squats to a chair are real squats. Rows with cans of chickpeas are real rows. The weight and difficulty will increase as your body adapts, but the form and the cues remain exactly the same whether you are pressing five pounds or fifty.Maxime also made a point about mind-muscle connection that is worth sitting with. When you are new to an exercise, your muscles may not fire the way they are supposed to. You do a back exercise and feel it mostly in your arms. You do a chest press and feel it in your shoulders. Higher repetitions with lighter weight give your nervous system time to learn how to activate the right muscles. Once that connection is built, you can start adding load. Skipping that step is how people end up with sore joints and confused results.Where to Find More from MaximeMaxime and his wife are co-founders of their fitness company, and they are doing live workouts on Substack twice a month. He also writes several articles a week sharing the frameworks they have built from coaching more than 1,200 people over the past six years. He also writes a weekly “soul post” where he pulls life lessons from his own experience and turns them into frameworks that other people can use. You can find him at maximesigouin.substack.com.The replay of our full session is available right above this article if you want to watch the demonstrations. And if you give any of these five exercises a try, start with the beginner version. Get the form right. Build the mind-muscle connection. The weight will come later. The movement patterns are what matter most. Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

I’ve been cooking at home long enough to know the feeling. You open the fridge at five-thirty, stare at the contents, and realize you’re about to spend the next 45 minutes assembling a meal from scratch, just like you did last night, and the night before that.Meanwhile, a restaurant kitchen is cranking out 200 plates in a single evening across 30 different dishes, and every single one tastes not just good but reliably, repeatably the same.So what do they know that we don’t?Chef Martin Oswald has spent 40 years in professional kitchens, and on this week’s live he let the audience in on what he calls the number one restaurant secret. It’s deceptively simple, and once you see it in action, you’ll wonder why nobody mentioned it sooner.The Problem Every Home Cook Shares With Every RestaurantRestaurants face the exact same challenge home cooks do. They need food to taste good, and they need it to taste good every single time. The difference is that a restaurant with 30 menu items and 90 different recipes would collapse under its own weight if every sauce, every dressing, every marinade started from zero.So they don’t start from zero. They start from one.One Sauce, Ten DinnersThe concept is called a mother sauce, and it works like this. You build one intensely flavored base, and then you branch it out into completely different dishes by adding one or two ingredients at a time.Martin used a familiar example to show how this plays out in practice. Think about a cheap restaurant and a jar of mayonnaise. That single jar becomes the foundation for a ranch dressing, a chipotle aioli, an herb sauce, a creamy vinaigrette. One product, and suddenly the restaurant has ten different condiments on the menu.The same thing happens with ketchup. Mix it with mayo and horseradish, and you’ve got a shrimp cocktail sauce. Add some smoke and vinegar, and it’s a barbecue sauce. The base stays the same. Only the final layer changes.The genius of the approach is consistency. When your flavor foundation is already built, you don’t have to rebuild it from scratch every night. You just decide which direction to take it.But We Can Do Better Than KetchupThis is where Martin’s approach gets interesting for anyone trying to eat well. Commercial ketchup is mostly corn syrup. Store-bought mayonnaise is loaded with oil and sugar. Those restaurant shortcuts work for flavor consistency, but they don’t work for people watching their metabolic health.Martin doesn’t even keep ketchup in his house. Instead, he builds mother sauces from real ingredients and controls what goes into them.For this week’s demo, he went Southeast Asian. The base sauce was built from two types of miso, Japanese rice vinegar (he likes it because it’s fermented, though apple cider vinegar works too), fresh ginger, garlic, lime zest, lime juice, soy sauce, a touch of maple syrup, and a little water.You can mix the whole thing together in about five minutes, and it keeps in the fridge for roughly a week. Leave out the garlic and it lasts even longer.The key, Martin emphasized, is to make it strong. Almost too strong to eat on its own. You want it concentrated because you’re going to dilute and redirect it in different directions over the coming days.One Mother, Four Completely Different DishesWhat happened next was the real demonstration of why this concept works in a home kitchen.Martin took a portion of the base sauce and used it as a marinade for sliced tofu, giving each piece a full flavor profile of umami, acid, and warmth before it ever hit the pan. That same sauce, used straight, would work just as well as a marinade for salmon or any protein you prefer.Then he took another portion and tossed it with julienned cucumbers, carrots, and radishes, adding a sprinkle of homemade furikake for a seaweed dimension. Now it was a quick pickle with a completely different flavor character than the marinated tofu, even though the two preparations shared the same foundation. He recommended letting the vegetables sit for at least ten minutes, though two hours is even better because the acid starts to break them down.The third branch was the showstopper. Martin blended the base sauce with soaked cashews and stalks of fresh lemongrass to create a lemongrass cashew mayonnaise. He tasted it on camera and declared it better than his already-famous ginger sauce, which is saying something if you’ve ever tried that recipe. The lemongrass doesn’t overpower. It just lingers in the background and makes everything feel like summer.And then all of it came together in a Vietnamese-inspired sandwich. Toasted bun, a generous spread of the lemongrass mayo on both sides, the marinated and seared tofu, and the pickled vegetables layered on top so that every bite gets fresh crunch and a hit of mint.Four dishes from one jar of base sauce, and each one tasted like it belonged to a different restaurant.The Calorie QuestionMartin was upfront about the tradeoffs. Cashew-based sauces taste incredible, but nut butters run around 600 calories per hundred grams, and that adds up fast if you’re not paying attention.His workaround for anyone managing their weight is to swap the cashews for silken tofu, which drops the calorie count to roughly 60 to 80 calories for the same amount while still giving you a creamy texture. For an even lighter option, he recommends using his cauliflower puree recipe as the base. You still get the lemongrass flavor and the creaminess, but the caloric load drops to almost nothing.This is the kind of thinking that makes cooking for metabolic health sustainable over time. You’re not giving up flavor. You’re just choosing a smarter foundation.Make It LastA few practical notes from the demo worth remembering.Lemongrass can be hard to find at some grocery stores, but Whole Foods and most Asian markets carry it. Martin’s advice is to buy a pound or two at once and freeze it. It holds its flavor well, and you won’t need a special shopping trip every time the craving hits. The same freezer logic applies to kaffir lime leaves, galangal, and curry pastes.Roll your limes firmly on the counter before cutting them. The pressure breaks the internal cells and gets you significantly more juice. And if your limes have dried out, soak them in water overnight and they’ll rehydrate and taste like fresh ones.Toast your sandwich buns lightly before assembling. Martin compared it to toasting nuts and seeds. Just enough heat to activate the natural oils and get a light golden color, without going so far that you damage the delicate fats. A minute on a hot pan with no oil does the job.And the biggest takeaway from the whole session might be the batch size. In professional kitchens, Martin used to make five gallons of base sauce and split it across seven to ten different dishes over several days. At home, even a quart will transform how your week unfolds. One night it’s a noodle bowl. The next night it becomes a salad dressing or a dipping sauce for steamed vegetables. The daily stress of figuring out dinner fades because the hardest part, building flavor from scratch, is already done and waiting in the fridge.The full recipe for Martin’s miso mother sauce recipe available on Chef Martin’s Healing Kitchen Substack.If you’re working on reversing insulin resistance and want to cook this way consistently, Martin and I run The Habit Healers community on Skool. Inside, you’ll find Martin’s complete Healing Kitchen recipe vault with videos and an ever-growing recipe library, my Insulin Resistance Reversal Roadmap course, and a live session with me every Tuesday at 4 PM PT where we dig into exactly this kind of practical strategy. Come join us. Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

How hard should you actually be exercising? It turns out your own voice can tell you. In this episode I break down the talk test, a simple and free way to find your ideal moderate-intensity exercise zone, sometimes called Zone 2, with no equipment required.I walk you through the fascinating research showing that the moment your speech shifts from comfortable to effortful lines up almost exactly with a real physiological boundary called the ventilatory threshold. This is the sweet spot where your body is working hard enough to adapt but not so hard that it breaks down. I explain why so many people stall out, either drifting along too easy to trigger any change, or grinding too hard every session and sliding toward overtraining and burnout. And I share why, when it comes to exercise for longevity, more is not always better and the benefits eventually plateau.Then I give you three simple tools you can use anywhere: the talk test, your heart rate, and rate of perceived exertion, plus a step-by-step protocol to dial in your personal zone.What you’ll learn in this episode:* How the talk test pinpoints your moderate-intensity exercise zone* Why exercising at the wrong intensity keeps you stuck on a plateau* How to use heart rate zones and RPE as simple cross-checks* How much exercise is actually enough for longevity* Warning signs of overtraining and when to see your doctor* A monthly re-tuning routine as your fitness improvesDr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/is-your-workout-helping-or-hurtingCheck out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/about Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

What if your bedroom thermostat is the most underused metabolic tool in your house? In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I unpack what the research actually shows about brown adipose tissue, insulin sensitivity, and how a small shift in bedroom temperature at night can change your blood sugar, your energy, and how your body handles food the next day.I walk you through a landmark four-month study where healthy men slept in rooms cooled to 66 degrees Fahrenheit and grew measurably more active brown fat in just one month, along with follow-up research in men with type 2 diabetes showing that mild cold exposure improved insulin sensitivity at a level that rivals some medications. I also explain why this happens, what brown fat actually does, and why most adults over 40 have a furnace inside them that’s been sitting idle for years.Then I share the Thermal Lever Protocol, a simple two-week experiment built around your bedroom thermostat. No supplements, no gear, no new workouts. Just a thoughtful tweak to the environment your body recovers in every night.What you’ll learn:* Why brown adipose tissue is a hidden lever for metabolic health and how it differs from white fat* How a cooler bedroom temperature for sleep can improve insulin sensitivity and overnight blood sugar* What the research shows about cold exposure and type 2 diabetes* A two-week Thermal Lever Protocol with daily tracking for fasting glucose and sleep quality* Who should talk to a doctor before trying this (Raynaud’s, neuropathy, beta-blockers, insulin)* Why your thermostat may be one of the most cost-free tools in lifestyle medicineDr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/what-if-your-thermostat-is-controllingCheck out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/about Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

Your cholesterol panel can look completely normal and still miss the cardiovascular risk that lands people in the hospital. Almost half of heart attack patients have an LDL under 100. In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I walk you through the five markers that reveal what your standard lipid panel was never designed to see.I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, a board-certified lifestyle medicine physician, and today we’re talking about why so many people with normal cholesterol still develop heart disease. The standard lipid panel measures cholesterol inside LDL particles, but it doesn’t count the particles themselves, and it doesn’t see inflammation, genetic risk, or insulin resistance. Those are the hidden drivers where real cardiovascular risk often lives. I’ll walk you through each one, what test reveals it, what the numbers mean, and exactly what to ask your doctor. I’ll also share a calculation you can do tonight, using numbers already in your last lab report, that gives you a free window into your metabolic health.What you’ll learn:* Why apoB (apolipoprotein B) is a more accurate measure of cardiovascular risk than LDL cholesterol* What Lp(a), or lipoprotein(a), is, why one in five adults has elevated levels, and why to test it once in your lifetime* How hs-CRP reveals the chronic inflammation behind atherosclerosis and heart disease* Why fasting insulin and HOMA-IR catch insulin resistance years before fasting glucose rises* The free TG/HDL ratio calculation you can run tonight from your most recent lipid panel* Lifestyle medicine strategies for improving every marker, from dietary patterns to resistance training and sleepDr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/why-do-so-many-heart-attacks-happenCheck out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/about Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

PCOS just got an official new name, and if you were diagnosed back in your twenties or thirties, you need to hear what changed. After a global consensus process involving 56 medical and patient organizations, polycystic ovary syndrome has been renamed polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome, or PMOS. The new name points to where the real engine of this condition has been hiding all along.In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I walk you through what the renaming actually means, why PCOS doesn’t fade after menopause the way most women have been told, and what you should be screening for in midlife. We talk about why insulin resistance drives the entire cycle, how the ovaries respond to insulin in a way no other tissue does, and what that means for your risk of fatty liver, heart disease, endometrial cancer, and prediabetes after 45. I share the specific lab tests to ask your doctor for, including the oral glucose tolerance test, fasting insulin and HOMA-IR, the triglyceride to HDL ratio, and FIB-4 for liver screening. We also cover why lean PCOS gets missed, what modest weight loss actually changes at the hormonal level, and the lifestyle steps that turn the volume down on the whole engine.What you’ll learn:* Why PCOS was renamed to PMOS and what the new name reveals about insulin resistance and androgen excess* How PCOS shows up after menopause and why a diagnosis from your twenties still matters at 50* The specific screening tests for metabolic health, fatty liver, and heart disease risk every woman with PCOS should request* Why lean PCOS is so often missed and what to ask for if your BMI looks normal* How modest weight loss, exercise, and insulin-friendly eating change the underlying hormonal cycle* What the latest research says about endometrial cancer risk in PCOS and how to lower itDr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/why-did-it-take-90-years-to-figureCheck out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/about Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

Your body already makes GLP-1, the same hormone behind Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro. The question is whether your meals are actually triggering it. In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I walk you through ten science-backed habits that quiet food noise, calm cravings, and tune your natural satiety signals.If you have ever eaten what felt like a perfectly reasonable dinner and found yourself rummaging through the pantry ninety minutes later, this episode is for you. I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, board-certified lifestyle medicine physician, and today we go deep on the gut hormone system that controls real, lasting fullness, the same one GLP-1 medications like semaglutide and tirzepatide are engineered to mimic. The truth is, your gut is already producing GLP-1, PYY, CCK, and ghrelin after every meal. Whether those signals actually reach your brain depends almost entirely on what you eat, how you eat it, and what you do in the hour after. I’ll walk you through ten habits, grounded in randomized trials and plant-based lifestyle medicine, that work together to reduce hunger naturally, stabilize blood sugar, and end the cycle of cravings that no amount of willpower can outlast.What you’ll learn:* Why eating vegetables and plant protein before starch can reduce your post-meal glucose spike by 53% and boost natural GLP-1 production* How fiber, plant protein, and resistant starch activate the gut hormones that quiet food noise and end constant hunger* The “protein leverage” effect that explains why low-protein, ultra-processed meals drive overeating* Why a ten-minute walk after meals lowers blood sugar more than standing breaks alone* How ultra-processed foods can drive you to eat roughly 500 more calories a day, even when sugar, fat, and fiber are matched* A simple weekly plan to layer all ten habits in without overwhelmDr. Marbas Substack: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/what-if-you-could-eat-less-and-neverCheck out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/about Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

Most of us assume hip stiffness is just part of getting older. The research tells a very different story. In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I’m walking through why your tight hips have far less to do with aging than you think, and why the fix is closer than you’ve been led to believe.I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, and in this conversation I unpack the largest study ever conducted on joint-specific flexibility, which found that age explains only about half of the change in hip range of motion across the lifespan. The bigger driver is something most of us do for eight to twelve hours every day. We sit. Hip extension, the exact motion sitting eliminates, is the first to go. I also walk through what actually changes when you stretch consistently, and it is not what most people assume. Your muscle fibers do not lengthen. What changes is your nervous system’s stretch tolerance, the point at which your brain decides a range is safe to allow. The range you think is gone is almost certainly still there, waiting to be retrained.I close with a simple four-move daily hip mobility routine, a sit-to-stand benchmark you can run at home, and the maintenance rule for keeping the flexibility you build.What you’ll learn:* Why hip stiffness has more to do with sitting than aging* What the research shows about stretching, nervous system stretch tolerance, and range of motion* A daily four-move hip mobility routine for tight hips and hip flexors* How to test your hip mobility with a simple sit-to-stand benchmark* The maintenance rule for keeping the flexibility you gain* When hip pain is a medical issue worth checking with your doctorDr. Marbas Substack: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/if-your-hips-could-talk-theyd-begCheck out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/about Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

If cooking feels like a bigger project than you have energy for at 7 p.m. on a Tuesday, this episode is for you. I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, and today on The Habit Healers Podcast, I’m walking through why the people with the highest cooking standards actually cook the least, and how a simple five-minute bowl can be one of the most metabolically sound meals you eat all week.For years, the message has been that healthy eating means scratch cooking, fresh herbs, and thirty minutes at the stove. But the research tells a different story. A nationally representative survey found that the people who defined cooking most narrowly were the most confident in the kitchen, but they also got dinner on the table the least often. Meanwhile, a long-term study of nearly 100,000 health professionals found that the people who prepared the most meals at home had a significantly lower risk of type 2 diabetes and gained less weight over time, regardless of how elaborate those meals were. In this episode, I unpack what the research on legumes, whole grains, and ultra-processed foods actually says, and why a bowl of canned beans, microwavable brown rice, raw vegetables, and a good sauce qualifies as a real, blood-sugar-friendly meal.What you’ll learn in this episode:* Why the people most confident in scratch cooking cook dinner the least often* How canned beans, microwavable whole grains, and bagged greens deliver real metabolic benefits* What the research says about home-cooked meals and type 2 diabetes risk* The four-part Five-Minute Bowl formula: grain, legume, vegetable, and a simple sauce* Why ultra-processed convenience meals affect your body differently than minimally processed whole foods* How to build a satisfying plant-forward dinner with no recipe and no stovetopDr. Marbas Substack: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/what-if-you-never-had-to-cook-againCheck out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/about Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

If you’ve ever felt lost reading a nutrition label or a health headline, full of words like polyphenol, phytochemical, carotenoid, prebiotic, and postbiotic, this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast is for you. I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, and today I’m sharing the visual mnemonics methodology I developed in medical school to make complex science stick, and I’m applying it to the most confusing vocabulary in modern nutrition.In this episode I walk you through the two big families that organize almost every nutrition term you’ll ever encounter: nutrients and bioactive compounds. You’ll learn why phytochemicals are a subset of bioactive compounds, how fat-soluble and water-soluble vitamins behave differently in the body, the difference between major and trace minerals, why omega-3 and omega-6 essential fatty acids compete on the same pathway, and why the old soluble vs insoluble fiber split misses what fiber actually does in your gut. I also cover the four major drawers of plant compounds, polyphenols, carotenoids, organosulfur compounds, and phytosterols, and close with how prebiotics, probiotics, and postbiotics fit together in gut health.What you’ll learn:* Why bioactive compounds is a more accurate umbrella term than phytochemicals* The difference between fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E, K) and water-soluble vitamins (B, C)* How omega-3 and omega-6 essential fatty acids compete on the same enzymatic pathway* Why prebiotic fiber and resistant starch matter for gut health beyond the soluble vs insoluble fiber framework* What polyphenols, carotenoids, organosulfur compounds, and phytosterols actually do* How prebiotics, probiotics, and postbiotics work together as a sequenceDr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/all-those-confusing-nutrition-termsCheck out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/about Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

What if your entire cardiovascular health could be captured in a single score from 0 to 100? In this episode, I walk you through Life’s Essential 8, the American Heart Association’s heart health score, and why the average American adult lands at just 65, the equivalent of a D+.I see it constantly in my practice. Someone walks in managing one number, their cholesterol, their blood pressure, their blood sugar, with no idea how it connects to their sleep, their activity, or their weight. Life’s Essential 8 is what happens when you finally put all of it on one page. I break down all eight components, four health behaviors and four health factors, so you can score yourself today and find the one area that’s quietly pulling your average down. I also share what the research since 2022 shows about longevity and biological age, including findings that link higher scores to more disease-free years and a body that ages more slowly. Then I give you the one piece of advice the framework’s own authors recommend, the move most people get backwards when they try to fix everything at once.What you’ll learn in this episode:* How the Life’s Essential 8 cardiovascular health score works and how to calculate yours* Why diet, physical activity, sleep, and nicotine exposure are the upstream metrics to target first* How heart health connects to longevity, healthy aging, and your biological age* The science of lowering cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood sugar through lifestyle medicine* The single most effective place to start if you feel overwhelmed by where to beginDr. Marbas Substack: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/whats-your-hearts-gpaCheck out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/about Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

Chef Martin Oswald was in his Austrian kitchen today toasting mustard seeds in a dry pan while I sat in our RV in Bend, Oregon, where we’ve parked for the summer because Las Vegas in June is not for the faint of heart. He was making a beet tartare and a high-nitrate summer salad, and at some point the conversation drifted from cooking into chemistry, which is what tends to happen when you put a chef and a doctor in the same room.Every ingredient Martin picked for today’s session was loaded with inorganic nitrate. Beets, arugula, mâche, celery, radish, parsley, rhubarb. That wasn’t accidental. And the reason it matters has to do with what happens to that nitrate once you eat it.The conversion pathway goes like this. You eat the food. Specific bacteria on your tongue reduce the nitrate into nitrite. That’s the first step, and it happens entirely in your mouth. When you swallow, the nitrite hits the acidic environment of your stomach, where some of it gets converted directly into nitric oxide. Whatever nitrite is left over enters your bloodstream and can be converted into nitric oxide later in your tissues, particularly in low-oxygen areas like working muscles.Nitric oxide tells the smooth muscle in your blood vessel walls to relax. Your blood vessels open up, blood pressure comes down, and your tissues start getting better oxygen delivery. This is real physiology with real cardiovascular consequences.It’s also why I wrote a piece a while back about antibacterial mouthwash. Those bacteria on your tongue that perform the first conversion? If you nuke them with mouthwash, you’ve cut the pathway off at the start. You can eat beets all day long and blunt the cardiovascular benefit because the bacteria weren’t there to begin the conversion.Martin brought up the question about nitrate in bacon and sausage, which is something I hear constantly. People see “nitrate” on the package and assume they’re getting the same benefit as a beet salad. The molecule is technically identical. But what it’s packaged with changes the outcome completely.In vegetables, nitrate comes packaged with vitamin C and polyphenols and a bunch of other antioxidants that steer the chemistry toward nitric oxide and block harmful byproducts from forming. In processed meat, you’ve got the opposite situation. Nitrite meets amino acids from the protein under high heat, and that combination can produce nitrosamines, which are carcinogenic. Heme iron from the meat accelerates the reaction, and there are no antioxidants in the mix to pump the brakes. Same molecule, very different ending.So that’s the biology. The cooking was just as good.Martin made two dishes. The first was a beet tartare, which is a plant-based take on what’s traditionally a raw meat preparation. He diced the beets small, then mixed in chopped cherries, toasted almonds, fresh-grated horseradish, and pickled rhubarb. The dressing was almond butter with pomegranate molasses, and he added black lentils to round out the protein and mellow the horseradish bite. The whole thing went into a ring mold and came out looking like something from a restaurant in Aspen, which is where Martin spent years cooking professionally.The second dish was an everyday summer salad built on the same high-nitrate idea but much simpler to throw together. He started with arugula and mâche. If you haven’t tried mâche, it’s worth seeking out. It’s sweet enough to calm arugula’s peppery kick, and it’s also one of the highest nitrate greens you can buy. Martin calls it Vogerlsalat in Austrian German, though you’ll probably find it labeled as lamb’s lettuce at the store. He added celery and radish, plus a big handful of flat-leaf parsley, which he pointed out is wildly underrated as a nitrate source. Blackberries went in for sweetness and chopped hazelnuts for crunch. Then thick-cut red onions, which add a textural punch you wouldn’t get from fine dice.Click below to get the recipe!The dressing was toasted hazelnuts blended with mustard and a bit of miso for umami, then loosened with vinegar and enough water to get it creamy. Martin’s tip was to roast the hazelnuts low and slow, around 160 degrees for about 20 minutes, to develop that deep toasted flavor you recognize from Nutella.What I appreciate about the way Martin cooks is that he’s always thinking about how flavors and textures work against each other. Beets are soft, so he pairs them with something that crunches. Arugula is spicy, so he brings in something sweet. He borrowed the thick-cut red onion idea from Greek salads, where those big rough chunks give you a burst of raw onion flavor that disappears just as fast as it arrived. Once you understand those principles, he says, you don’t really need the recipe anymore.He also said something practical about sweeteners that I want to pass along. Rhubarb is extremely tart, and when you’re pickling it you need some sweetness. Martin’s not precious about it. Date syrup is great if you have it. But a small amount of brown sugar in the pickling liquid, when you’re eating the fruit and discarding the liquid, is not something to lose sleep over. Getting so rigid about a teaspoon of sweetener that you skip the rhubarb entirely would be a bad trade, given how much nitrate rhubarb contains.One last thing, because I love telling this story. Research suggests that eating about one medium beet, or a two-ounce shot of beet juice, roughly two hours before exercise can improve endurance performance. The mechanism is exactly what we already covered. More nitric oxide, better blood flow, better oxygen to the muscles. My youngest son ran cross-country in high school, and we used to “dope” him with beets before meets. He turned out to be one of the 10 to 15 percent of people who get beeturia, meaning his urine and stool went bright red. If you’re not expecting it, that’s a memorable bathroom trip. But it’s completely harmless.Summer is a good time to lean into these foods. The produce is at its best and most people are already reaching for lighter meals. Martin’s salad works as a full lunch, and the tartare is the kind of thing you bring to a dinner party when you want people to ask how you made it.Looking for a supportive community?If you’re working on healing insulin resistance, these are exactly the kinds of meals that add up over time. Inside The Habit Healers community on Skool, you’ll find the Insulin Resistance Reversal Roadmap course, which walks you through building these habits step by step. Martin’s Healing Kitchen recipe vault lives there too, with videos and an ever-expanding recipe library. And every Tuesday at 4 PM Pacific, I go live for 90 minutes of coaching and Q&A.Click below to join us! Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

If you finish every meal feeling overstuffed and wondering why, the problem may not be willpower. It may be speed. Eating too fast quietly outruns your body’s own fullness signals, and slowing down can change how much you eat without any dieting at all.In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, and I walk you through the science of eating speed and your satiety hormones, the natural GLP-1, CCK, and PYY that tell your brain you’ve had enough. The catch is timing. These fullness hormones take time to build, so when you eat quickly, the food is gone before the signal ever arrives. I share what the research shows about chewing more, eating slower, and even a striking study where slowing meals down led to lasting weight loss with no calorie counting. Then I give you a simple, doable habit called The Slow Bite that helps you eat mindfully, feel full sooner, and stop overeating, starting with a single meal a day.What you’ll learn:* How your natural GLP-1 and other satiety hormones control appetite and fullness* Why eating slowly and chewing more can help you eat less without trying* The link between fast eating, weight gain, and metabolic health* A step-by-step way to practice mindful eating and slow down at meals* How putting your fork down between bites can help curb overeatingDr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/why-are-the-fast-eaters-three-timesCheck out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/about Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

Can an NMN supplement really make you run faster after menopause? I started taking NMN and resveratrol after hearing Harvard scientist David Sinclair tell a story on a longevity podcast, and what happened to my running data did not fit anything I’d expect as a physician.In this episode, I share my own timeline honestly: a personal record at the Boston half-marathon, then menopause, a broken ankle, and eighteen months of detraining at fifty-five. Then, about four weeks after starting NMN and resveratrol, I was running faster than my lifetime baseline at a heart rate fifteen beats per minute lower. I can’t prove the supplements did it, and I won’t pretend to. Instead, I walk you through what the science actually says about NAD+, mitochondria, and healthy aging, including the famous “marathon mouse” study, the human trials in postmenopausal women and runners, and the real controversy around resveratrol’s bioavailability. We also talk about why so much of the NMN supplement market is mislabeled, and the lab tests I’d want before starting.In this episode you’ll learn:* Why NAD+ levels decline with age and what that means for energy and metabolic health* How NMN may improve insulin sensitivity and exercise performance in postmenopausal women* What the research on resveratrol and David Sinclair’s longevity claims really shows* Which labs to check before and after starting NMN, including homocysteine* Why third-party testing matters when choosing an NMN supplement* Why resistance training, protein, and sleep still matter more than any capsuleDr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/can-a-pill-make-an-aging-runner-fasterCheck out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/about Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

GLP-1 weight loss medications are evolving faster than most people can track, and a lot of what you’ve heard is already out of date. In this episode I give you the updated map: how Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, Zepbound, and the new triple agonist retatrutide actually differ, and why it matters for your results.Here’s what I want you to know. These drugs aren’t a willpower fix, they’re correcting the hormonal signals that drive hunger and metabolism, and each generation adds another dial. I walk through semaglutide, tirzepatide, and retatrutide in plain language, then tackle the question that frustrates so many patients: why the scale stops moving. The weight loss plateau isn’t your body becoming immune to the medication. It’s metabolic adaptation, and once you understand it, you have real options. We also cover the new higher-dose semaglutide, the oral GLP-1 pill, and the lifestyle habits, protein, strength training, fiber, and sleep, that amplify whatever your medication is doing.What you’ll learn:* How semaglutide, tirzepatide, and retatrutide differ in how they work* Why the GLP-1 weight loss plateau happens and what to do next* How to protect muscle with protein and strength training on a GLP-1* What the research shows about weight regain after coming off these drugs* New options: higher-dose semaglutide and the oral GLP-1 pillDr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/why-your-weight-loss-drug-stoppedCheck out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/about Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

What if your heart, your kidneys, and your blood sugar were never separate problems at all? In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I break down cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic syndrome, or CKM syndrome, the framework that connects insulin resistance, high blood pressure, kidney health, and heart disease into one picture, and why most adults are already affected without knowing it.I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, a board-certified lifestyle medicine physician, and I walk you through how these four systems share the same wiring, how trouble in one quietly accelerates damage in the others, and how the American Heart Association’s five CKM stages map that progression from healthy to high risk. The part most people miss is that standard lab work can look completely normal while a problem is building underneath. I explain the tests worth asking for, including fasting insulin and your HOMA-IR score, the triglyceride-to-HDL ratio, apoB, and the two kidney tests almost nobody orders, UACR and eGFR. Then we get practical with five evidence-based habits for better metabolic health, from a DASH-style, plant-based eating pattern to movement, sodium, and the overnight repair window of good sleep.What you’ll learn in this episode:* Why cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic syndrome (CKM syndrome) ties heart, kidney, and metabolic health together* How fasting insulin and HOMA-IR can reveal insulin resistance years before blood sugar rises* The kidney tests most people never get, UACR and eGFR, and why they predict heart risk* What the five CKM stages mean and how to find where you stand* Five habits that can slow or even reverse the cascade, including a DASH and plant-based dietDr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/the-5-habit-prescription-nobody-gaveCheck out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/about Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

Your blood pressure spikes every single morning, and a standard doctor’s visit can miss it completely. That morning blood pressure surge is when heart attacks and strokes cluster most, yet most people never know theirs is dangerously high because office readings look fine by mid-morning.In this episode, I explain why high blood pressure in the morning is so commonly overlooked, and what researchers call masked morning hypertension. We talk about why the hour you wake up predicts cardiovascular risk better than the clock, what a non-dipping pattern and undiagnosed sleep apnea have to do with it, and how to actually see your own surge with simple at-home blood pressure monitoring. Then I walk you through nine evidence-based habits to lower blood pressure naturally, most of which you can start this week without a prescription. This is lifestyle medicine the way I practice it: grounded in the research, but translated into what you can do tomorrow morning.What you’ll learn in this episode:* Why the morning blood pressure surge raises heart attack and stroke risk, and how to measure yours* How masked morning hypertension hides from normal office readings* The link between non-dipping blood pressure, sleep apnea, and overnight pressure* How a potassium salt substitute, beetroot juice, and ground flaxseed lower blood pressure naturally* Simple morning habits like slow breathing and isometric holds that calm the surge* When your morning numbers are a red flag worth bringing to your doctorDr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/why-do-more-heart-attacks-happenCheck out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/about Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

If you’re tired but can’t sleep, or you fall asleep fine and still wake up exhausted, the problem may not be your bedtime at all. In this episode I walk you through why better sleep actually starts in the morning, and a simple four-part protocol to reset your circadian rhythm from both ends of the day.Most sleep advice obsesses over the hour before bed, but the research points somewhere most people never look: the first thirty minutes after you wake up. I explain how morning sunlight sets your internal clock through the suprachiasmatic nucleus, why it controls when melatonin shows up fourteen hours later, and how skipping it leaves you groggy in the morning and wired at night. From there I break down the three evening levers that protect that progress, including a caffeine cutoff that’s likely hours earlier than you think, why eating too close to bed quietly disrupts your metabolism while you sleep, and a five-minute pen-and-paper habit shown to help people fall asleep faster. This is lifestyle medicine you can start this week, one small habit at a time.What you’ll learn:* Why morning light exposure is the most powerful signal for healthy sleep* How your circadian rhythm controls melatonin, cortisol, and when you feel sleepy* The evidence-based caffeine cutoff for falling asleep faster* How late-night eating affects blood sugar and sleep quality* A simple wind-down routine and to-do list trick that quiets a racing mind* The full Sunrise 8-3-1 protocol, you can build one step at a timeDr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/what-if-your-insomnia-starts-at-sunriseCheck out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/about Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

Is your smartwatch actually accurate? Your Apple Watch, Garmin, Fitbit, Oura Ring, or Whoop band tracks up to fourteen health numbers, but it never tells you which ones come from a real measurement and which ones are an algorithm’s best guess. In this episode, I break down exactly which wearable health metrics you can trust and which ones to ignore.Here’s what I want you to know. The most famous fitness number of all, VO2 max, is built on a misunderstanding. The longevity studies everyone quotes never actually measured it. I’ll walk you through what the research really found, why your resting heart rate and step count are the numbers worth watching, and why your sleep stages, stress score, blood oxygen, and recovery readiness carry far more noise than the marketing admits. We’ll also talk about orthosomnia, false AFib alerts, and the moment a fitness tracker stops helping your health and starts hurting it.Then I’ll give you a five-minute way to estimate your real cardiorespiratory fitness at home, no lab required.What you’ll learn in this episode:* Why smartwatch VO2 max accuracy is weaker than you think, and what the longevity studies actually measured* Which two wearable health metrics have the strongest link to how long you’ll live* How to read your heart rate variability and recovery score without letting them run your life* Why the 10,000 step goal has no scientific basis, and the step count that actually matters* A simple at-home test to estimate your cardiorespiratory fitness in five minutes* The red flags that mean you should stop looking at your watch and call your doctorCheck out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/aboutDr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/how-smart-is-your-smartwatch-really Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

I’m writing this from Bend, Oregon, where we parked our RV for the start of a summer road trip. Chef Martin Oswald is across the Atlantic, where Europe has been baking in early summer heat. And that’s how we ended up here, making Vietnamese summer rolls on a Wednesday morning with viewers from all over the world watching us fumble through German vocabulary and debate the correct pronunciation of “schnitzel.”Every week, Martin and I go live so he can teach me (and all of you) how to cook food that actually supports your health. I keep expecting the lessons to slow down after nine months and more than 200 recipes. They don’t.Today’s lesson started with a confession from Martin. The summer rolls you order at restaurants? They’re probably not as healthy as you think. Most of the interior is rice noodles, which have almost no fiber or minerals and virtually nothing in the way of vitamins. The shrimp sitting on top is a small gesture on a big pile of starch. The rice paper wrapper itself is just rice flour and tapioca, a vehicle with no real nutritional contribution. So what you end up eating is a pretty package filled mostly with empty carbohydrates.Martin’s approach was to throw all of that out and start over. Keep the rice paper, because it’s neutral and holds everything together. But replace every filler ingredient with something that actually feeds your body.Get the summer roll recipes here.The Setup Matters More Than You ThinkBefore Martin touched a single piece of rice paper, he spent time on his work surface. He wiped it down and emphasized working on a smooth surface rather than wood. Every single ingredient was already prepped and organized in front of him. Mise en place. I knew that one, and I was a little proud of myself.His point was practical. Once the rice paper is wet, you have a very small window before it gets too soft to work with. If you’re scrambling to julienne a carrot while your wrapper dissolves on the countertop, you’ve lost. Everything gets prepped first. No exceptions.For the rice paper, Martin used warm water in a shallow container and rotated each sheet through by hand rather than dropping it in. The rotation keeps the paper from sticking to itself, and the warm water softens it faster than cold. He pulled it out while it was still slightly firm, because the rice paper continues to absorb water on the countertop. Over-soaking means tearing.Roll One, The Simple ClassicThe first roll Martin built was the most approachable. He laid a soft green lettuce leaf edge to edge across the rice paper, then layered in shredded lettuce and cucumber alongside firm tofu that he’d pan-cooked with turmeric for an anti-inflammatory boost.The mint is where he got particular. Four or five leaves, but spread across the entire surface so that every single bite contains mint. Not piled in the center where one bite gets all the flavor and the rest gets nothing. Martin was emphatic about this. Mint has the strongest flavor in the whole roll, and distributing it evenly is what separates a good summer roll from a great one.Then came the rolling technique. Start from the bottom edge and roll over the fillings once, then fold both sides inward like a burrito before finishing the roll. Martin’s advice was to commit. Don’t rush, because the paper tears. But don’t hesitate either, because the paper sticks to itself and you can’t undo it. One confident motion with the sides tucked in, and you’re done.Roll Two, The Gentle VersionThis is the one that really caught my attention. Martin brought up something from Austrian cooking tradition called Schonkost, which translates roughly to “gentle food.” It’s a way of preparing meals for people who are recovering from illness or dealing with digestive issues, especially those finding that raw vegetables don’t agree with them the way they used to.He took the same summer roll format and filled it entirely with cooked, soft ingredients. Carrots boiled until tender, soft celery root, tofu, cooked soybeans, and spinach, all of it easy on the digestive system but still packed with nutrients. He topped the visible layer with black sesame seeds and cooked soybeans, which looked beautiful through the translucent rice paper.I thought this was such a smart adaptation. We hear from people in our community all the time who want to eat more vegetables but struggle with raw produce. They feel left out of the fresh-food conversation because their gut simply won’t cooperate. Martin’s cooked version gives them a way in.Roll Three, The Open CanvasBy the third roll, Martin was in full creative mode, layering asparagus alongside mushrooms and carrots with a bed of spinach underneath. He made the case that once you understand the technique, the rice paper becomes a completely neutral vehicle for whatever flavor profile you want.He ran through some of the combinations he’s experimented with over the years. Black bean tempeh made an appearance. So did avocado with cilantro and corn for a Mexican-inspired version, and radicchio paired with mushrooms and sweet basil for people dealing with fatty liver, since bitter greens support liver function. He’s also done rolls with quinoa, forbidden rice, brown rice, and just about every kind of bean you can think of. He even mentioned barbecue tofu.The idea that stuck with me was how different this is from the way most people think about summer rolls. We tend to treat them as a fixed recipe with shrimp and rice noodles and mint and nothing else. Martin sees the wrapper as a blank canvas, no flavor of its own, ready to become whatever cuisine you feel like eating that night.Two Sauces, and the Reason Behind ThemMartin made two dipping sauces, and the reason he served both together was something I hadn’t thought about before. In his restaurant days, they noticed customers enjoyed summer rolls more when they could alternate between a rich sauce and a clean one. The peanut sauce delivers that creamy, satisfying depth. Then you switch to the tamari sauce, which is lighter and sharper, and your palate resets. Back to peanut, and it tastes brand new again. He called it avoiding flavor fatigue, and once he explained it, I realized I’ve experienced this at every good restaurant without ever knowing why.The peanut sauce came together quickly. Grated ginger, grated garlic, peanut butter, lime juice and zest, rice vinegar, a bit of sriracha for heat, and water to thin it out. Martin’s one caution was about consistency. European peanut butters tend to be softer and oilier, so his recipe might need more liquid if you’re using a thicker American-style brand. The fix is just adding water until you reach a smooth, dippable texture. He also noted that lime zest contains pectin and adds both flavor and body, so don’t skip it.On the garlic, Martin offered a practical tip. Raw garlic in a sauce like this will turn within about three days and throw off the whole flavor. So either use the sauce quickly, or cook the garlic first to extend the life of the batch.The tamari sauce was even simpler. Tamari (which Martin pointed out is the gluten-free option, since regular soy sauce often contains wheat), lime juice, rice vinegar, a touch of maple syrup, and water. Tamari is extremely salty on its own, so the water isn’t optional. It’s what makes the sauce balanced rather than overwhelming.Martin served both sauces in small, narrow containers rather than flat plates. The narrower vessel lets you dip the roll deeper, coating more surface area per dip. Small detail, big difference.The Little Tricks That Add UpA few other things from today that I want to make sure land in writing, because they’re the kind of professional kitchen knowledge that makes home cooking so much easier.When your limes dry out and get hard (and they always do if you forget about them for a week), soak them in water for 24 hours. They rehydrate and give you far more juice than you’d expect. Before cutting any lime, roll it firmly against the counter with your body weight pressing down. That breaks up the internal membranes and loosens the juice so squeezing takes half the effort.When you cut finished summer rolls, wet the knife first. A dry knife sticks to the rice paper and tears the whole thing apart. A damp knife slides through cleanly. Martin wet his blade between every cut.For storing rolls ahead of time, lay them in a container and cover with a damp cloth napkin. Not a paper towel, which sticks and shreds. A fabric napkin, lightly moistened, keeps the rice paper from drying out. One viewer mentioned wrapping each roll individually in parchment paper for packed lunches, and Martin thought that was a great idea.And the mango trick. If you want to make your summer rolls look like something from a restaurant menu, dice a bit of fresh mango and place it on top of the fillings before your final roll. It shows through the translucent rice paper and makes the whole thing look almost too pretty to eat.Looking for a community to support you on your health journey?If you’re looking for a community that supports you in healing insulin resistance one tiny habit at a time, come join us in The Habit Healers Community on Skool. Members get access to my Insulin Resistance Reversal Roadmap course, Chef Martin’s Healing Kitchen with his ever-expanding recipe vault full of sauces and adaptations like the ones you saw today, and a live 90-minute session with me every Tuesday at 4 PM PT. I’ll drop the link here so you can check it out. This article is a companion to today’s live cooking session. Hit play on the video above to watch Martin build every roll and both sauces in real time. Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

What if the biggest driver of skin aging isn’t sun or genetics, but your blood sugar? In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I’ll show you how to boost collagen naturally and rebuild your skin from the inside, no expensive serums or collagen supplements required.Here’s something I find most people have never heard. A chemical process called glycation, the same reaction that browns a steak, slowly stiffens the collagen in your skin over decades, and it’s driven by your blood sugar. In one study, researchers could estimate people’s age from their faces, and higher blood glucose tracked with looking older. The truth is, most skin care targets the surface, while the actual sagging and wrinkles happen one layer deeper, in the dermis, where what you eat and how you move matter most.In this episode, I walk you through the five inputs that shape skin quality from the metabolic level. We’ll talk about why both aerobic and strength training improve skin structure, how stabilizing blood sugar slows glycation, why vitamin C and protein feed your body’s own collagen factory, how carotenoid-rich foods can visibly shift your skin tone in about six weeks, and why deep sleep is when your collagen actually gets rebuilt. I’ll also walk through what the collagen supplement research really shows once you look past the marketing.What you’ll learn in this episode:* Why blood sugar and glycation drive wrinkles and sagging from the inside* How exercise improves skin structure through muscle-to-skin signaling* The collagen-boosting foods that supply vitamin C and protein for skin* How carotenoid-rich vegetables can shift your skin tone in six weeks* Why deep sleep is when your body rebuilds collagen* What the evidence really says about whether collagen supplements workCheck out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/aboutDr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/the-wrinkle-cause-that-has-nothing Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

If you’ve tried every sleep tip on the internet and you still wake up at 3 a.m. or drag through your afternoons, the problem probably isn’t your bedroom. It’s everything you’re doing during the day. I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, and on this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I walk you through seven research-backed sleep habits, one for each day of the week, that build better sleep hours before you ever lie down.Most sleep advice targets the last thirty minutes of your day. But your melatonin production, your circadian rhythm, your core body temperature, and your nervous system are all being shaped by what you eat at breakfast, when you exercise, how you handle your post-dinner blood sugar, and what you do in the ninety minutes before bed. I’ll explain the science in plain language and give you a simple, one-habit-per-day plan you can start tomorrow. No supplements. No apps. No expensive gadgets. Just a full-day system that helps your body do what it already knows how to do.What you’ll learn in this episode:* Why eating 20 to 30 grams of protein at breakfast directly influences how much melatonin your brain makes at night* The two daily windows when exercise shifts your circadian rhythm earlier, and one window that does the opposite* How a 10-minute walk after dinner protects your sleep by lowering your evening blood sugar spike* Why a hot bath 90 minutes before bed helps you fall asleep faster (the mechanism is the opposite of what most people think)* A simple breathing technique that activates the vagus nerve and shifts your nervous system into rest mode* The 5-minute to-do list trick that helps you fall asleep 9 minutes fasterCheck out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/aboutDr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/seven-unusual-sleep-habits-youve Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

What if better sleep has nothing to do with your bedroom? In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I’ll show you how to sleep better naturally by building a full-day sleep system, no supplements, no apps, no expensive gadgets required.Here’s the truth I share with my patients all the time: if you’ve struggled with sleep for years, your sense of “normal” has quietly drifted. You’ve adjusted to five and a half hours, the 3am wake-up, the afternoon caffeine. And when you try the usual sleep tips, they fall flat, because almost all of them target the bedroom, when your sleep is actually built at breakfast, in the afternoon sun, and in the bath ninety minutes before bed.In this episode, I walk you through seven simple, science-backed habits, one for each day of the week. We’ll talk about how morning protein feeds your body’s melatonin production, why the timing of your workout shifts your circadian rhythm, how an after-dinner walk steadies your blood sugar for deeper sleep, and why a hot bath and a pair of socks work with your core body temperature to help you fall asleep faster. By next weekend, you’ll have a complete sleep routine in place.What you’ll learn in this episode:* How a protein-rich breakfast sets the ceiling on tonight’s melatonin* Why morning sunlight and exercise timing reset your circadian rhythm* How an after-dinner walk lowers blood sugar and protects your sleep* Why a hot bath before bed helps you fall asleep faster* Two simple breathing techniques that calm your nervous system at night* The five-minute to-do list trick that quiets a racing mindCheck out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/aboutDr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/seven-unusual-sleep-habits-youve Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

Your fasting glucose is normal, so why is your A1c going up? If that question has ever left you confused, this episode is for you. I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, and on The Habit Healers Podcast I explain why a single morning blood draw can miss the most important window in your metabolic health: the hours after you eat.We start with a surprising idea borrowed from engineering, a 1949 mathematical proof about how often you need to measure something to actually see it, and I show you why fasting glucose samples your body thousands of times too slowly. Those after-meal spikes, called postprandial glucose, are where the early warning signs of insulin resistance and prediabetes quietly show up first, often years before your fasting number ever moves. Even people with completely normal labs can spend three or more hours a day with blood sugar above 140. Then I walk you through the fuller picture you’re allowed to ask your doctor for, and nine practical habits that start where the science is strongest: the quality of the food on your plate.In this episode, you’ll learn:* Why normal fasting glucose with a rising A1c is so common, and what it really means* How postprandial glucose spikes drive most of your blood sugar problem early on* Which tests to ask for, including fasting insulin, HOMA-IR, and a continuous glucose monitor* What “time in range” is and why it tells you more than years of fasting draws* How a whole food, plant-based diet improves insulin sensitivity at the cellular level* Simple habits like meal sequencing, post-meal walks, fiber, sleep, and stress resetsCheck out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/aboutDr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/what-does-it-mean-when-your-fasting Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

Why does grip strength predict how long you’ll live better than your blood pressure does? In this episode, I dig into the science of muscle power, grip strength, and longevity, and why the strength that keeps you independent as you age is not the kind you build with slow, heavy lifting.Most of us assume that staying strong is about how much we can lift. But here’s the part most people miss: as we age, power declines faster than raw strength, often twice as fast, and power is what catches you when you stumble, gets you up off the floor, and lets you step off a curb without thinking. I walk you through what the research actually shows, including a study of more than a hundred thousand adults linking grip strength to all-cause mortality, and a six-month trial in previously inactive older adults that moved nearly every marker of aging in the right direction.Then I get practical. I explain why a single kettlebell is one of the best home tools for building functional strength, power, and balance in a few square feet, and I lay out exactly how to start.What you’ll learn in this episode:* Why muscle power, not just strength, is the key to aging well and staying independent* How grip strength works as a signal for whole-body muscle health and longevity* What kettlebell training did for grip strength, walking distance, and balance in adults aged 59 to 79* Why twelve minutes of swings can build both strength and explosive power* How to choose your first kettlebell and progress safely without getting hurt* A simple ten-minute, three-day-a-week beginner routine to start this weekCheck out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/aboutDr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/the-single-piece-of-iron-that-trains Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

What’s your heart’s GPA? The American Heart Association built a cardiovascular health score called Life’s Essential 8, and the average American adult is pulling a D+. In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I walk you through the eight measures that determine your heart health, why a single composite score is more useful than any one lab value, and how to figure out which habit to change first.The Life’s Essential 8 framework scores you from 0 to 100 across four health behaviors (diet, physical activity, nicotine exposure, and sleep) and four health factors (BMI, blood lipids, blood glucose, and blood pressure). I break down what each component measures, the exact scoring thresholds the AHA uses, and the research showing why people with high cardiovascular health live longer, age slower biologically, and lower their risk of heart disease, stroke, dementia, and diabetes. Then I give you the one-metric strategy I recommend to my patients instead of trying to overhaul everything at once.What you’ll learn in this episode:* How to calculate your own cardiovascular health score using Life’s Essential 8* Why non-HDL cholesterol and sleep duration matter more than most people realize* The connection between Life’s Essential 8 scores, biological age, and life expectancy* How to use the AHA’s free My Life Check tool to assess your heart health* Which single habit to change first if your score is lowCheck out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/aboutDr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/whats-your-hearts-gpaA Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

Can someone at 220 pounds be metabolically healthier than someone at 155? In this episode, I explain why the real driver of type 2 diabetes and insulin resistance isn’t how much fat you carry, but whether you’ve exceeded your own personal fat storage capacity.I walk you through what I call the garage model of metabolic health: the idea that your fat tissue has a fixed number of parking spaces, and trouble begins only when that garage fills up and fat starts spilling into your liver, muscles, and the space around your organs. This is where fatty liver disease, rising triglycerides, and high blood sugar actually come from. I break down the cascade one domino at a time, from overloaded fat cells to visceral fat, to a fatty insulin-resistant liver, to the cholesterol changes that standard testing often misses.Then comes the hopeful part. I explain why this cascade reverses in a predictable order, why your pancreas may be recovering rather than failing, and why diabetes remission depends far more on losing enough weight than on where you started.What you’ll learn:* Why metabolically healthy obesity and thin people with high blood sugar both come down to fat storage capacity* How visceral fat and fatty liver disease quietly drive insulin resistance* Why your triglyceride-to-HDL ratio and ApoB can catch problems years before a glucose test* The order in which liver, lipids, and the pancreas recover during diabetes reversalWhich blood markers and labs to request, including HOMA-IRCheck out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/aboutDr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/your-fat-cells-just-walked-off-the Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

Your blood sugar looks normal, your HbA1c is fine, and your doctor says you’re healthy. So why are you exhausted by 2pm, carrying weight around your middle that won’t budge, and walking into rooms forgetting why? In this episode, I explain why standard blood work misses insulin resistance, the upstream driver behind so many of the symptoms people are told to ignore.I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, and on The Habit Healers Podcast I walk you through what fasting glucose and HbA1c actually measure, and what they leave out. We talk about why fasting insulin is the test almost no one orders, how your pancreas can keep your numbers looking perfect for years while damage builds underneath, and the link between insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes, heart disease, fatty liver, PCOS, and even brain health. Then we get to the good news: this is reversible. I share the exact sequence of small daily habits, starting with blood sugar, that builds metabolic health the way a flywheel builds momentum.What you’ll learn in this episode:* Why a normal fasting glucose can hide insulin resistance for years* The one blood test to ask your doctor for: fasting insulin* How insulin resistance connects to type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s* Why walking 10 minutes after your largest meal steadies blood sugar* How a continuous glucose monitor turns your body into a real-time experimentThe habit-stacking system that makes healthy choices automaticCheck out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/aboutDr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/what-if-your-fatigue-your-belly-fat Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

Your fasting glucose is normal, but your A1c keeps climbing, and no one can tell you why. In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I’m walking you through exactly what that gap means, why post-meal blood sugar spikes are the hidden driver of rising A1c in most people, and the nine habits that target the hours your fasting blood draw never sees.I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, a board-certified lifestyle medicine physician, and this is one of the most common patterns I see in my practice. A patient comes in with a “normal” fasting glucose of 95 and an A1c that’s quietly drifting from 5.1 to 5.4 to 5.6, and they’re told everything is fine until suddenly it isn’t. The research actually shows that for people in this early-warning zone, postprandial glucose accounts for roughly 70% of the total problem, and it deteriorates years before fasting numbers move. We’ll cover the labs most doctors don’t order, including fasting insulin and HOMA-IR, why a whole food plant-based diet remains the most powerful lever for reversing insulin resistance, and the small, doable habits that smooth out blood sugar spikes after meals.What you’ll learn in this episode:* Why fasting glucose misses postprandial blood sugar spikes and what that means for prediabetes risk* The specific lab tests to ask for, including fasting insulin, HOMA-IR, fructosamine, and CGM time-in-range* How meal sequencing and a 10-minute post-meal walk can lower post-meal glucose by up to 37%* Why a whole food plant-based diet improves insulin sensitivity at the cellular level* How sleep, stress, and hydration quietly drive glucose dysregulation* When to ask your doctor about iron deficiency and other conditions that distort A1cCheck out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/aboutSubstack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/what-does-it-mean-when-your-fasting Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

Fast eaters are more than three times as likely to carry belly fat, even when they’re eating the same food as slower eaters. In this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I walk you through the science of why eating speed quietly shapes weight, blood sugar, and metabolic health, and what to do about it.We dig into the gut hormones that tell your brain you’re full, GLP-1, CCK, and PYY, and why they need about twenty minutes to catch up to your fork. I share what researchers found when seventeen volunteers ate the same ice cream in five minutes versus thirty minutes, why chewing alone changes your hormone response, and what a six-year study of nearly 60,000 adults revealed about people who shifted from fast to slower eating. I’ll also tell you about a small German trial where six men lost a median of eleven percent of their body weight by simply slowing down at the table, and kept it off for almost two years.Then I walk you through this week’s habit, The Slow Bite, a simple twenty-minute mindful eating practice you can start at your next meal.What you’ll learn:* Why fast eating is linked to belly fat, metabolic syndrome, and weight gain* How GLP-1, CCK, and PYY create your natural “stop eating” signal* Why chewing more slowly may reduce calorie intake by around twelve percent* The connection between stress, eating speed, and overeatingA simple twenty-minute mindful eating habit you can start this weekCheck out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/aboutDr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/why-are-the-fast-eaters-three-times Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

When Tim Gannon walked into the kitchen at the Pyramid Bistro in Aspen, Chef Martin Oswald figured he was a salesperson. Martin let him stand there for ten minutes. Gannon didn’t seem to mind. When Martin finally acknowledged him, Gannon rattled off every flavor on the menu that night, sage and allspice and the rest, with the precision of someone who had spent his life thinking about food at this level. Then he introduced himself as the founder of Outback Steakhouse and asked Martin to develop the sauces and spice blends for a new restaurant chain.What Martin learned from that project is something most home cooks never think about. Chain restaurants succeed or fail based almost entirely on their sauces. The rice and broccoli are more or less the same from kitchen to kitchen. What makes people come back, what makes a thousand different locations taste like the same place, is what goes on top. Martin went through five rounds of tastings with the CEO team before a single sauce was approved. That’s how much it mattered.And here’s what makes this relevant to your Tuesday night dinner. The same principle applies at your kitchen table. Martin keeps about forty sauce recipes in his portfolio, but his advice for home cooks is to find three to five that your household genuinely loves and get comfortable making them on repeat. When he caters events for a thousand people, the strategy is identical. Good sauces on the table, everyone’s happy.The problem is that most of the sauces people reach for work against them. A standard barbecue sauce starts with ketchup, which is roughly half corn syrup, then piles more sugar on top. An Alfredo runs about five hundred calories of butter, cream, and cheese before you’ve touched the pasta. These sauces taste good because fat and sugar are the easiest buttons to push for flavor. But they aren’t the only buttons.The Habit Healers is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Two Sauces, One PrincipleDuring our live session this week, Martin built two completely different sauces to demonstrate a single idea. Every sauce, whether it’s barbecue or cream-based or a vinaigrette, needs four things working together. Something for viscosity, something for acidity, a spice layer, and a backbone ingredient that keeps the whole thing from tasting flat. Once you understand those four components, you can build dozens of sauces without ever opening a bottle.For the barbecue sauce, dates replace corn syrup. They handle both jobs that corn syrup does in a traditional recipe, providing sweetness and that thick, sticky texture that makes barbecue sauce cling to food. Passata, a thick Italian tomato puree, replaces the ketchup. Toasted spices go in layered rather than singular. Martin uses chili powder alongside chipotle flakes rather than picking just one, because layering different forms of heat creates complexity that a single spice can’t. Dijon mustard acts as an emulsifier, binding everything together the same way it holds a vinaigrette in suspension. Mulberry or pomegranate molasses provides the deep, dark tartness that traditional molasses would. Apple cider vinegar adds acidity. Everything goes into the blender.The finished sauce has no salt, no refined sugar, and no oil. And when Martin tasted it on camera, his eyebrows went up and he went quiet, which is how you know it’s actually good.One detail worth stealing from his process. He tasted the sauce on a carrot stick, not off a spoon. A sauce eaten straight should taste intense. What matters is how it tastes on the food you’ll actually serve it with. That’s a professional habit most home cooks skip.Thanks for reading The Habit Healers! This post is public so feel free to share it.The Sauce Nobody ExpectsThe second sauce started with frozen English peas, which sounds like the least promising sauce ingredient imaginable. But peas bring three things to a blender that most people don’t realize. Their soluble fiber creates a smooth, creamy viscosity without any cream. They carry about four to five grams of natural sugar per hundred grams, which is enough sweetness to keep a sauce from tasting flat. And they puree into a bright green that looks genuinely beautiful on a plate.Martin built this one as what he called a freestyle, applying the same four-component framework with completely different ingredients. Fenugreek, coriander, and black pepper toasted in a dry pan for the spice layer. Almond butter as the binder and a source of fat to help absorb fat-soluble vitamins. Lemon rather than vinegar for a gentler acidity that pairs better with the peas. And fresh horseradish, grated directly in, for backbone. Horseradish is a cruciferous vegetable, nutritionally in the same family as broccoli, and it provides enough heat to balance the natural sweetness of the peas without overpowering them.The finished sauce can stand in anywhere you’d reach for a cream-based sauce. Pasta, roasted vegetables, grain bowls, crudités. At a fraction of the caloric load and with actual nutrients instead of saturated fat.Why This Changes More Than You ThinkThe real takeaway from watching Martin work is that the viscosity and richness you associate with butter and cream and sugar can come from whole foods you already have access to. Dates, peas, cauliflower, corn, silken tofu, soaked cashews. Each one creates a different style of sauce base, and each one lets you skip the calorie-dense ingredients that make most sauces a metabolic problem rather than a metabolic asset.If you’ve been buying bottled sauces because you assumed the homemade alternative would be complicated or bland, this is the week to test that assumption. Pick one of these two sauces, make it once, and taste it on whatever you’re already eating.Here is Martin’s 40 Sauce Recipe Index. Join Us in The Habits Healers CommunityEverything we covered in this episode is part of a bigger system. The Habit Healers Community on Skool is where I teach the full Insulin Resistance Reversal Roadmap and where Chef Martin Oswald's recipes are matched to each stage of your healing. You get the complete course, live coaching with me every Tuesday, the tools to see what is happening inside your body, and a community doing this together. Join the Habit Healers Community here. I'll see you inside. Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

What if your annual physical is missing the tests that matter most? Most standard lab panels were built to catch disease, not to tell you where your health is heading. On this episode of The Habit Healers Podcast, I’m walking you through eight blind spots in the typical yearly checkup, four blood markers your doctor can add to your next requisition, and four simple physical assessments you can do at home in under five minutes.I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, board-certified lifestyle medicine physician, and these are the tests I think every adult should know about. We’ll talk about why fasting insulin and HOMA-IR can flag insulin resistance years before fasting glucose ever moves out of normal range. Why ApoB is a more accurate measure of heart disease risk than the LDL cholesterol on your standard lipid panel. Why Lipoprotein(a), or Lp(a), only needs to be tested once in your entire life but rarely is. And why hsCRP, a marker of chronic inflammation, may help explain the half of heart attacks that happen in people with normal cholesterol.Then we’ll cover the at-home assessments most doctors never do. Grip strength, single-leg balance, walking speed, and the chair sit-to-stand test. Each one is linked to long-term mortality risk in large studies, and each one gets better with practice.What you’ll learn in this episode:* The fasting insulin and HOMA-IR test that detects early insulin resistance* Why ApoB is a better predictor of cardiovascular disease than LDL cholesterol* How a one-time Lp(a) blood test can change your heart disease risk picture* What hsCRP reveals about chronic inflammation and heart attack risk* Four at-home longevity tests, including grip strength and gait speed, that predict healthy aging* How to talk to your doctor about adding these markers to your next physicalCheck out the Habit Healers Community: https://www.skool.com/habithealers/aboutDr. Marbas Substack Article: https://drlauriemarbas.substack.com/p/what-are-the-8-tests-your-doctor Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

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

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 sauce, and in its traditional form, it starts with about a pound of butter. The butter does two things. It provides richness and it creates the smooth, creamy texture that makes the sauce cling to food.Martin’s version skips the butter entirely. Instead, he blends roasted onions with soaked cashews, roasted garlic, and vegetable stock. The cashews, once soaked and blended smooth, provide the same creamy body that butter would, without the saturated fat. The roasted onions deliver the sweetness. The garlic adds depth. The stock adjusts the consistency.The ingredients for this version are simple. Roasted onions (from the batch you already made), a handful of soaked cashews, a couple of cloves of roasted garlic (which you roasted right alongside the onions), vegetable stock, and whatever fresh herbs you have on hand. Martin mentioned basil and thyme as favorites, though rosemary works just as well. Blend everything until smooth, adjust the thickness with more stock if needed, and season.Martin tasted it on camera and could not stop eating. Three bites turned into an extended sampling session, and his reaction told you everything you needed to know.One Sauce, a Dozen MealsWhat makes this soubise so practical is its versatility. Martin used it as the base for a risotto made with rye berries, though any whole grain works. Quinoa and barley are obvious substitutes, but so are buckwheat and millet. He tossed in English peas and corn for sweetness, spooned the sauce over a roasted sweet potato with sunflower seeds and a drizzle of pomegranate molasses, and kept going from there. You could stir in tomato paste for a different direction, or blend in basil puree to make something closer to a basil cream sauce. Add more cashew butter and it becomes an alfredo.For anyone managing blood sugar, Martin offered a sensible approach. The demonstration layered several sweet elements together for visual effect, but in practice, you would choose one or two rather than stacking them all. A roasted sweet potato with the soubise is one meal. The grain risotto with peas and corn is another. And if you are watching your glucose response, eating a small salad with bitter greens like radicchio or Belgian endive before the main course can help moderate the spike.The deeper lesson of the session was not really about any single recipe. It was about rethinking where sweetness comes from. Most of us reach for sugar or honey without considering that the vegetables already in our refrigerator have their own sweetness waiting to be unlocked. Roasting is the key. Patience is the only ingredient it requires.If you want to get guidance on how these techniques fit your own health goals, join us in The Habit Healers community on Skool. It is where we take everything from these live sessions and put it into practice together. Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

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

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 Too Much Time?I asked Dr. Jud if there’s a way to tell when you’ve crossed from healthy effort into the perfectionism zone. He said to pay attention to two things.First, look at whether the time you’re investing is producing any real change. When you’re swapping individual words in an article, and none of those swaps would make any difference to a reader, you’ve passed the point of useful revision. You’re spending more and more time for less and less return.Second, ask yourself if you’re taking feedback personally. When we take things personally, Dr. Jud said, we close down. We get defensive. We can’t learn anything in that state. He connected this to Carol Dweck’s work on mindset. When we’re contracted and defensive, whether from internal self-judgment or from someone else’s comment, we’re in a fixed mindset. Learning requires the opposite. It requires being open enough to wonder what you might not know yet.I had a great example of this from my own Substack. One of my very first articles that went viral, the one about habits of people who age well, got two negative comments out of hundreds of positive ones. Two people felt offended by it. I could have fired back. I could have pointed out that hundreds of other people loved it and these two were outliers. Instead, I responded with questions. I asked, gently, what about the piece had landed that way for them. Their second responses softened. It turned into a real conversation. We both grew from it.Dr. Jud called that a growth mindset in action. Curiosity instead of defensiveness. You can feel the difference in your body when you shift from one to the other.The Valley of DisappointmentI see a version of perfectionism in my clinic all the time, though it doesn’t always look like perfectionism. It looks like impatience.Patients with blood sugar challenges come in motivated. They change their diet, they start exercising, and they expect their numbers to transform right away. When the labs don’t budge after a week or two, they get discouraged. I call this the valley of disappointment, and it swallows a lot of people.What I try to explain is that a hemoglobin A1C reflects your blood sugar trend over three months. Not three days. Your cells are already responding to the changes you’ve made. Your metabolism is already shifting. But those changes take time to show up in lab results, and we live in a world that has trained us to expect instant feedback on everything.That’s perfectionism applied to your body. You’ve decided what the timeline should be, and when your biology doesn’t cooperate, you assume the effort was wasted. But the effort is working. Your body just hasn’t had time to show you yet.My early Substack articles were not as good as the ones I write now. They weren’t. And the only reason the newer ones are better is that I kept hitting publish on the ones that were good enough. If I’d waited until I thought something was perfect, I would have published nothing.Fear Is the Cheapest Room in the HouseWe spent a good chunk of our conversation talking about fear as a motivator, because this comes up constantly in my practice. In primary care, we’re short on time. So we go to the thing that feels logical. Your blood pressure is high. Your labs are getting worse. You need to make changes or you’re shortening your life.I had a patient not long ago who was diagnosed with diabetes. The diagnosis scared her, and she did well for about six months. Then something stressful happened in her family and she went back to her old habits. After that, the worsening lab numbers didn’t faze her at all. She’d become immune to the fear. What finally got through to her was when she physically couldn’t do the things she wanted to do. That had nothing to do with a number on a lab report. It was about her actual life.Dr. Jud mentioned a colleague at Yale who studied tobacco packaging. All those graphic images of diseased lungs that Congress required on cigarette packs? His research showed they didn’t actually change behavior. You can scare someone into paying attention for a moment, but the effect wears off fast. Then you need a bigger scare, and a bigger one after that, and eventually there’s nowhere left to go.He quoted a 14th-century poet named Hafiz. Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I want to see you in better quarters.That line has stuck with me. I made a decision early on not to use fear or rage bait to grow this newsletter. Every marketing course I’ve taken says that’s the fastest path. Common enemy, polarizing takes, urgency that borders on panic. I refuse to do it. Growth has been slower. But my readers are here because something about this work feels right to them, not because they’re running from something.You can apply the same idea to parenting, by the way. You can scare your kids into compliance for about ten seconds. After that, you’ve just damaged the relationship.What You Get From Letting GoDr. Jud’s final point was the most practical one. He said the way out of these loops, whether it’s perfectionism or the fear trap, is to actually pay attention to how it feels when you do things differently. Not in some forced positive-thinking way. Through actual lived experience.What does it feel like to hit publish and move on to the next thing instead of agonizing for another hour? What does it feel like when someone gives you tough feedback and you get curious about it instead of defensive?It feels better. Your brain can learn from that, the same way it learned the old pattern.And if you catch yourself beating yourself up for being a perfectionist? Dr. Jud laughed at that one. That’s just another loop, he said. Same approach. Notice it. Ask yourself what you’re getting from it. See if kindness works better than the beating.I’ll add my own practical note. I’ve learned that I’m more vulnerable to my inner critic when I’m tired or hungry or trying to work late at night. So I write first thing in the morning, after my walk, when I’m rested and fed. I exercise early because I know I won’t do it later, and I know that skipping it gives the critic more to work with. That’s not some grand strategy. It’s just knowing myself well enough to stay out of my own way.You’re worth that kind of honesty with yourself. And your good enough is probably a lot better than you think.To read Dr. Jud Brewer’s full article, visit “Perfectionism Is a Calibration Problem” on his Substack, Inside the Curious Mind. Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe

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

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 has ruined more dishes with than any other. It is powerful, and a little goes a very long way. If you overshoot, there is no fixing it. He recommends it for soups, where the liquid dilutes the intensity, and nowhere else. I told him he had found his weakness in the kitchen. He did not appreciate that.Bitter and SweetMartin held up a celeriac root, and I had no idea what it was until someone in the chat guessed it. In America, celeriac is not common, but it should be. It is stronger than green celery, and it is one of the best tools Martin knows for replacing sodium. You only need about a tablespoon, diced small and added to your cooking liquid or stock. It gives the dish a backbone, a savory depth that fills in some of what salt used to provide.The contrast to bitterness is sweetness, and Martin reaches for dried fruit like goji berries, dried apricots, raisins, and dates. This is the same principle behind Moroccan stews that pair chickpeas with dates, or cauliflower dishes that tuck a few raisins into the sauce. The sweetness rounds off the bitter edge without masking it entirely.Umami and FreshUmami is the heavy hitter, and Martin draws it from mushrooms, tomato paste, and roasted onions. Roasting onions in the oven, sliced and covered with foil, produces an umami-like flavor that is surprisingly intense. Tomato paste, which you can find in sodium-free versions, adds both umami depth and body to a sauce. Mushrooms are umami in its purest form.But umami is also where flavor fatigue sets in fastest. A mushroom risotto is incredible for five bites and then it becomes heavy. The contrast is something bright, fresh, and acidic. A simple salad with a light vinegar dressing, served alongside or on top of the dish, resets your palate and makes the next bite of the rich entree feel new again.The Dish He BuiltOnce Martin finished walking through the six contrasts, he built a complete meal using all of them at once.He started by toasting whole oat groats in a dry pan with caraway seeds, a whole clove of garlic (unpeeled), a bay leaf, rosemary, thyme, and oregano. The toasting deepened the flavor of the grain before any liquid ever touched it. His argument is that when you cannot cheat with salt, everything else has to taste better, and toasting your grain is the first place to start. This works with brown rice, buckwheat, millet, and red rice. White rice, he noted, has no flavor to unlock, so toasting it does nothing.He deglazed the pan with his own homemade mushroom stock, made with zero sodium. His method for stock is to save every herb stem and vegetable scrap, add them to a pot that lives in the fridge, boil it up, and repeat. The stock just keeps getting richer.In a separate pan, he roasted cauliflower and celeriac with a splash of stock. He added fenugreek seed (which he noted has good research behind it for diabetics), tomato paste for umami, and a spoonful of almond butter for richness. Then came the chili flakes for heat and the goji berries for sweetness against the bitterness of the celeriac and cauliflower.The salad was baby romaine, thinly sliced raw onion (Martin puts raw onion in every salad now after reading about its health benefits), a light splash of apple cider vinegar, thin apple slices for sweetness, and a generous dusting of sumac.Sumac, by the way, is one of Martin’s absolute top ingredients for sodium replacement. It delivers a tart, almost lemony flavor that fills in for salt in a way few other seasonings can.He plated the grain and vegetable stew in a bowl, placed the cold salad directly on top, and then drizzled the reduced balsamic around and over everything. All six contrasts were present in a single dish. And he used a spoon to eat it, dipping the bottom of each bite into the pooled balsamic for that opening sting before the rest of the flavors arrived.He said he did not miss a single drop of sodium. I believe him.Making It Work at HomeYou do not need to use every one of these contrasts in every meal. The point is to understand the system so you can apply whichever pieces make sense for what you are cooking. A roasted sweet potato becomes a different experience with a drizzle of reduced balsamic. A grain bowl gains real depth if you toast the grain first and add celeriac to the cooking liquid. A stir fry that came out too hot calms right down with a spoonful of tahini. And a heavy stew that is starting to feel monotonous comes alive again when you pile a cold, bright salad on top.And if your sauce feels thin and flavorless, cook it down. Viscosity carries flavor, and Martin made this point clearly. A thin broth slides off your taste buds before you can register it, while a thick sauce coats your palate and lets you actually taste what is there. This is the same reason the Japanese add silken tofu to their soups. It gives the liquid enough body to hold the flavor in your mouth.Martin’s flavor wheel, which maps out all of these relationships and more, is available on his Substack, Martin’s Healing Kitchen. It is worth bookmarking. If you know somebody dealing with hypertension, send them this video. Even if they are not ready to cook without salt entirely, learning one or two of these contrast techniques can start shifting the balance. And if you try building this dish yourself, come back and tell us how it went. I want to hear what your version tasted like.Chef Martin and I go live every Wednesday at 10 AM Pacific. If you missed the earlier sessions on spices and herbs for sodium replacement, those replays are on both of our Substacks. Come join us next week.The Habit Healers Skool CommunityWhether it is blood sugar swings that wreck your afternoon, a body that hurts when you move, sleep that never leaves you rested, or stress you can feel in your chest, it is all connected, and it has a name.The Habit Healers Community on Skool is where I teach the Insulin Resistance Reversal Roadmap. I give you the exact tools to see what is happening inside your body, live coaching with me every Tuesday, Chef Martin's recipes built for healing, and one small habit stacked on the next until the whole system runs without willpower.Join the Habit Healers Community here. I'll see you inside. Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe