Healing with Dr Helena

Today’s Brain Booster is Elevate your expectations!

Last week I spoke about how our beliefs become our biology — especially how negative ageist stereotypes actually drive how we age. Today we’re going to build on that and discover how our mind can mend our maladies.

When you let go of limiting labels and assumptions about symptoms, pain and disease, you boost your brain’s ability to activate healing. And the m...

Today’s Brain Booster is Think bolder, not older — because our beliefs influence our biology.

In fact, our beliefs BECOME our biology.

In the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, people holding negative beliefs about ageing demonstrated significantly worse memory performance after 38 years than those subscribing to less negative age stereotypes — and this was after adjusting for education, depression, chronic illn...

Today’s Brain Booster is: Yearn to learn.

In order to powerfully boost your brain through learning, look for something that fulfils the following criteria:

1. It’s something you genuinely love doing, it keeps you intrinsically motivated, and it makes you lose track of time.
2. It requires effort, and pushes you to learn new rules, acquire new skills, or continuously stretch your abilities.
3. It takes you to new environments &md...

Last week I finished with the question: what drugs, other than antibiotics, disrupt our gut microbiota — the trillions of micro-organisms that live in our digestive tract?

An obvious contender is antacids — also known as heartburn medications — which are drugs that reduce stomach acid production to treat reflux. Decades of research have established a strong link between acid suppression, gastrointestinal changes, a...

Today’s Health Headline is: Microbes mess with our genes!

(The Brain Booster will come later.)

Did you know that you have a gene called ‘The Guardian Gene?’ It’s official name is TP53, and it encodes a protein called p53. The reason for its colloquial name is that this protein protects our DNA, spots damage in our cells, and stops mutations in their tracks. These processes help to shield us from cancer and aut...

Last week’s Brain Booster was Go with your gut — a deep dive into all things gut health. It was another very long segment so I ended it after the Health Headline. That means if you haven’t watched or listened to last week’s episode, I strongly recommend you do so before you listen to this one because last week I explained the rationale for what I’m talking about today.

When it comes to gut health, What&...

Today’s Brain Booster is: Go with your Gut.

Is your gut sensitive, irritable, leaky or inflamed? 

Are you into:

• Prebiotics
• Probiotics 
• Postbiotics 
• Synbiotics 
• Psychobiotics 
• Pharmabiotics
• Antibiotics
• Penbiotics 
• Or Panbiotics?!

(I will explain all those terms over the next few episodes.)

Why does it matter? 

For most of modern medicine, the brain and gut were treated as separate organs, with sep...

Today’s podcast episode was prompted by a Whether question. So I’ll give you the question first, and then I’ll answer it in the context of a Brain Booster, Health Headline, and What’s Missing from Modern Medicine? 

"Can you tell me WHETHER it’s better to tackle high blood pressure with western medicine or alternative medicine? I have never smoked, do not drink alcohol, I weigh 73kg at height of 1.7...

Last week’s Brain Booster was Turn up the heat! — a deep dive into how using a sauna more than 4 times a week can reduce the risk of dementia by over 60%! 

Given that this is a very bold claim, I spoke for longer than I’d anticipated, in order to explain the mechanisms by which heat exposure brings about health benefits. 

So I decided to end the episode after the Health Headline because the feedback I&rsqu...

Today’s Brain Booster is: Turn up the heat! 

For thousands of years, humans have deliberately exposed themselves to heat: Roman baths, Turkish hammans, Finnish saunas, indigenous sweat lodges, and Japanese onsen (natural hot springs). 

And it turns out that sweating it out in a sauna on a regular basis:

• Lowers blood pressure
• Improves overall heart health and blood vessel function
• Reduces the risk of a heart attack, s...

For today’s episode, I’m sharing an interview I had with the dynamic and inspiring Sarah Rusbatch on her podcast Stronger Bolder Wiser.

Sarah is an accredited Grey Area Drinking Coach and the author of the best-selling book Beyond Booze — How to create a life you love, alcohol-free.

Sarah and I immediately clicked because her approach to alcohol is the same as my approach to healthy eating in my book NeuroSlimming. ...

Today’s Brain Booster is: Appreciate to elevate your thinking, and recognise that gratitude is more than a platitude. 

It’s really unfortunate that in today’s hashtag world, the notion of practising gratitude, and appreciating our blessings, has become hackneyed and superficial. Yet behind the cliches, appreciation and gratitude boost our brain in profound and distinct ways.

So today’s episode will be a f...

Today’s Brain Booster is: Purge yourself of plastic! 

Why? And what do I mean by that?

Plastics have become ubiquitous in modern life. Over time, larger plastic items degrade into smaller particles — micro and nanoplastics (MNPs) — and these MNPs can infiltrate air, water, soil, food chains, and ultimately the human body. While the environmental impacts of microplastics are well-documented, human health consequ...

Today’s Brain Booster is: Train your brain to reframe. 

Have you ever put your foot in it and unintentionally offended someone? Or received notification that your job interview was unsuccessful?

Before you know it, your mood has plummeted. Even though physically nothing has happened to you, your heart rate and blood pressure rise, your muscles tighten, and you start replaying the event in your mind. 

Why couldn’t...

I’m not going to reveal today’s Brain Booster because at the start of the episode I give you a clue and ask you to guess what the Brain Booster might be. So let’s launch straight into today’s Health Headline: People are more powerful than pills.

Study after study has shown that supportive relationships are the number one way to improve our health, happiness and longevity. And it took me a long time to get my ...

Today’s Brain Booster is: Skip the sugary sip — because every soft drink is a bullet to your brain!

A landmark study found that people who regularly consumed sugary drinks — including soft drinks, energy drinks, sports drinks, sweetened tea and fruit juices — had smaller brain volumes and scored worse in tests of recent memory. 

A large review of US adults aged 60 years and older showed that increased...

Today’s Health Headline is: Sitting is the new smoking — literally!

I know we usually start with a Brain Booster but for today’s Brain Booster to make sense we have to dive into the Health Headline first. Now I suspect this is not the first time you’ve heard the statement that sitting is the new smoking. But have you stopped to reflect on what it actually means? Or do you think it doesn’t apply to you b...

Welcome to my podcast, ‘Healing with Dr Helena’, where I challenge the limiting way we currently view disease, and offer a new paradigm for vibrant health and true healing. If modern medicine isn’t providing you with enough answers, and you want to come alive and thrive, rather than merely survive, this podcast is for you.

It’s also for people who want to boost their brain to perform at their peak, avoid Alzh...

Welcome to my podcast, ‘Healing with Dr Helena’, where I challenge the limiting way we currently view disease, and offer a new paradigm for vibrant health and true healing. If modern medicine isn’t providing you with enough answers, and you want to come alive and thrive, rather than merely survive, this podcast is for you.

It’s also for people who want to boost their brain to perform at their peak, avoid Alzh...