Dr. Caroline Leaf Podcast

Many people around the world are currently stuck at home, which can be difficult under the best of circumstances. Yet what happens if you have young children? What happens when the schools are closed, you have to work and everyone is at home, frustrated, scared and uncertain as to how long this situation will last? In this week’s blog and podcast, I speak to child psychologist, parenting coach, author of The Tantrum Survival Guide: Tune In to Your Toddler's Mind (and Your Own) to Calm the Craziness and Make Family Fun Again, founder of Little House Calls and mother of two young boys Dr. Rebecca Schrag Hershberg on parenting during the pandemic, tips on how to help your children deal with changes in routines, missed milestones, anxiety and fear, and mental health strategies for parents.  Podcast Time Highlights -7:00 Why Rebecca loves children -9:30 Why we need to be the grown-ups in the room -11:18 How do we manage disrupted routines? -12:35 Discipline in context  -16:50 Should we still celebrate birthdays? -

We are surrounded by information, and many of us know what we need to do to be healthier, so why don’t we do it? Why is there such a disconnect between information and implementation? Can we learn to make better decisions? In this week’s blog and podcast, I discuss why we often make poor choices with doctors David and Austin Perlmutter, and how we can overcome the curse of instant gratification and technology addiction, detox our brains and live happier lives. Podcast Time Highlights -5:19 What is mental hijacking? -8:50 The disconnection syndrome -11:40 Why is empathy so important? -14:05 How do we take back control of our mind? -20:40 How instant gratification damages the brain -33:55 Inflammation and depressive thinking: is there a link? -41:10 Narcissism and the plague of tribalism  -54:25 How to work with family -59:00 How to raise successful, smart and healthy children -1:01:37 Current wellness trends: the good, the bad and the ugly   Read the full episode transcript and blog here: https://drleaf.com/bl

Handling your finances can be challenging at the best of times, but what happens when you are in the midst of a pandemic? How do you keep your money safe when the world around you is in a state of flux? In this podcast, I speak with financial expert Chris Hogan on strategies to manage your finances and reduce money anxieties during this crisis, as well as helpful tips on how to save, budget, and plan for a recession or a layoff.   Podcast Time Highlights -2:05 Is the economy being quarantined? -2:32 The stock market is a living thing -3:26 How to control the controllables -4:08 Are the banks safe? -5:06 401Ks and the investment rollercoaster -6:18 Why you shouldn’t have all your eggs in one basket -6:41 What can we do if there is a recession? -7:58 Why is everyone talking about interest rates? -8:57 Is there any hope for small business owners? -12:00 Debt is always a threat -15:12 How can I support small business owners? -16:14 What can you do if you have been laid off? -19:57 How do you deal with market vola

Many of us are spending a lot more time at home these days (and dealing with a lot more stress!), so there is no better time to look at how we can make our living spaces happier and healthier. In this week’s blog and podcast, I speak with bestselling author, journalist, podcast host and filmmaker Max Lugavere on how we can get rid of toxins in our home that may be contributing to our anxiety, and how we can all make simple and easy changes to our lifestyle that can boost our mood and improve our wellbeing. To get Max's new book The Genius Life visit: https://geniuslifebook.com For more info on Max visit his website: https://www.maxlugavere.com   Podcast Time Highlights -2:20 How Max went from pre-med to telling people’s stories -7:54 Why nutrition is just one part of the health story -12:35 Why exercise is medicine for the brain -18:28 Why we should take more cold showers & the power of thermal exercise -23:55 Environmental toxins and the game of chemical whack-a-mole -30:40 How to de-stress and manage

This calming audio guide will help you pre-, during, and post-panic attack. It is taken from my new brain detox app SWITCH. In this app you will learn how to identify the root of whatever is causing you mental distress, how to eliminate the toxic thinking habit and patter, and rebuild a healthy new neural network. It's 5 step 21 day program that takes 15-30mins each day. To download the app today visit: https://theswitch.app With all the stress, anxiety, social distancing and isolation stemming from the coronavirus, the need to connect with each other is more critical than ever. Join our dedicated Facebook group to stay connected with others and share your challenges and best tips for dealing with our new normal: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1870578619744226/?ref=share Visit my website at https://drleaf.com for more free resources, tips, and tools to help you improve and heal your mental health! And be sure to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get even more mental self-care tips delivered to your inbox w

We all know that exercise is good for us, but did you know that movement changes us from the inside out, improving both our mental and physical health? In this episode I discuss the power of movement with bestselling author, research psychologist and lecturer at Stanford Dr. Kelly Mcgonigal, and how exercise can help defeat depression, anxiety, loneliness and shame, making us feel more connected with ourselves and with others.  PLUS Kelly shares some great tips on how to get more movement and exercise at home and in your daily routine so you don't even have to go to a gym!  Podcast Time Highlights -2:39 What Kelly wants written on her tombstone -4:25 How exercise helps heal depression and anxiety   -9:11 Your brain on exercise -13:20 How exercise makes you a nicer person  -16:45 How movement connects us  -21:00 Why all movement is good movement  -25:00 How exercise helps us deal with toxic stress -32:18 Hope molecules  -37:44 Exercise and the gut microbiome -44:00 How movement can help you love yourself  -48:

The world is currently riveted in fear of what is known as COVID-19, a new type of coronavirus that has put a lot of people at risk of getting ill or potentially dying. I understand that this situation can be frightening, and we should take all necessary precautions, following the WHO and CDC guidelines. We need to bring balance to the fear, because the fear can be more dangerous than the virus. In fact, fear-based stress and anxiety can and will weaken your immune system, the very thing that needs to be strong during a health crisis!  In this special podcast episode I cover tips, techniques, and simple strategies to help protect and boost your mental and physical health during this pandemic.  WHO website: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/events-as-they-happen CDC website: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prepare/cleaning-disinfection.html?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fcoronavirus%2F2019-ncov%2Fcommunity%2Fhome%2Fcleaning-disinfection.html   Additional resou

Life can be tough. You will fail at certain things. You will be stressed. Bad things will happen to you. People will disappoint you. But did you know that, despite all these things, life can be awesome? Yes, it is true! In this week’s blog and podcast, I talk with bestselling author and speaker Neil Pasricha about how we can all learn to be more stress-resilient and failure-proof, how life is still awesome even when things don’t go our way, and how we can teach our children to thrive in a world where change is inevitable.   Neil is no stranger to bad news. A number of years ago his first wife left him and his best friend committed suicide. To cope with his grief, he decided to start a blog called 1000 Awesome Things to cheer himself up, which focused on life’s simple pleasures. This blog soon became viral, was voted one of the best blogs in the world and led to Neil’s his first bestseller, The Book of Awesome, which focuses on how, despite the ups and downs of life, there is so much to be thankful for and ama

In this podcast I interview the incredible creator and founder of Whole30 and bestselling author, Melissa Urban, on her health journey, dealing with trauma, how to recover from addiction, how to help someone who is battling with depression and much more!   Melissa didn’t just wake up on day and decide to found the Whole30 movement. Her journey to health was a long one: even though she grew up in a good home, she was sexually abused by a family member as a teenager. To suppress the trauma, she turned to drugs, and what started off as a distraction soon became an addiction. She tried to hold in her pain, and started self-destructing internally—trauma and pain cannot be suppressed, and will manifest in other areas of our lives if we do not embrace, acknowledge and deal with the hard stuff in life.    Podcast Time Highlights:   2:34 What inspired the Whole30 movement?   4:08, 43:00 How community lays the foundation for true success   6:00, 8:08 How Melissa overcame her drug addiction   19:08 How we are not define

There is so much to be anxious about these days, including what to eat. But did you know that there is a way of eating that can actually help reduce the level of anxiety you experience on a day-to-day basis? In this week’s podcast, I discuss the anti-anxiety diet with RD Alie Miller, how you can balance your hormones and reset your adrenals, and how to heal the brain and body by changing what you eat! We also discuss the best way for women to do keto, and how probiotics are nature's prozac!   Allie is an integrative functional medicine practitioner and bestselling author. She focuses on functional medicine, that is looking at the body from a holistic standpoint and helping people achieve and maintain optimal mental and physical health. She is known as the “body’s detective”, and has made it her life’s work to find the root causes of the chronic conditions many people today battle with.   Podcast Time Highlights: 2:16 How Allie become the “body detective” 5:00 Why stress is the Achilles’ heel of whole body wel

In this episode I interview master life coach Kara Loewentheil on how to overcome imposter syndrome, defeat self-doubt, boost your self-confidence, and deal with past hurt and rejection. Kara gives some great tips on how to "unf*ck your brain!" Kara Loewentheil is a Master Certified Coach with a B.A. from Yale and J.D. from Harvard Law. In the last three years after pivoting from a legal career, she has grown her life coaching business from 0 to 7 figures. She's the host of the iTunes top-rated self-help podcast Unf*ck Your Brain which has been downloaded over 5M times, and she has been featured in outlets like Marie Claire, Mind Body Green, MSN.com, and The Huffington Post. Kara lives in New York City. Learn more about Kara and her podcast at unfckyourbrain.com and find her on social media @karaloewentheil! Podcast Time Highlights: 2:45 How Kara went from practicing law to deprogramming the patriarchy 5:40 How perfectionism stops us from reaching our goals 7:51 Shutting up your inner critic  11:55 Why faking

We have all experienced shame before: the feeling that we are not enough, or that we do not live up to certain standards or ideals. But what happens when this shame spirals out of control? What happens when it overtakes our life, and affects the way we think and behave? In this week’s podcast I speak with Megan Bruneau, a psychologist and registered counselor who specializes in crisis support, compassion-based therapy and executive coaching, about the problem of shame, learning how to love yourself despite your imperfections, how to help someone with an eating disorder, the danger of medicalizing normal human emotions and why positive affirmations often fail.  Megan has been featured on national television programs like Good Morning America and The T.D. Jakes Show) and is a regular contributor to Huffington Post, MindBodyGreen and Forbes. Using both her personal and professional experience, her goal is to teach people to face and learn to live with their imperfections and be kinder to themselves. As Megan say

In this podcast I talk to Harvard-trained nutritional psychiatrist Dr. Georgia Ede about how certain diets can affect our mental wellbeing, what foods help the brain function best, and what foods to avoid if we want to heal and improve our mental and physical health. Dr. Ede, in both her personal life and practice, has found that making certain lifestyle modifications can help treat major mental health issues such as ADHD, depression, anxiety and panic attacks. Through her research, she has found that nutrition can help heal and restore brain function, empowering people to take back control over their mental state and their lives, without the stigma and negative side-effects so common to pharmacological treatments for mental distress. For more on Dr. Ede visit: https://www.diagnosisdiet.com Highlights from this episode: 4:13-How Dr. Ede changed the way she treated mental health 5:53-How nutrition affects mental health 8:16-What is mental ill-health, and how can food help? 9:00-Food myths, and the best way to

In this episode I interview New York Times Bestselling author and happiness expert Gretchen Rubin on what happiness is, how we can achieve sustainable happiness in our lives, dangerous myths about happiness, essential strategies for managing anxiety, stress, and worry, how to get more reading done, and more! Gretchen Rubin is one of today’s most influential and thought-provoking observers of happiness and human nature. In her work, she draws from cutting-edge science, the wisdom of the ages, lessons from popular culture, and her own experiences to explore how we can make our lives happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative. Podcast highlights: -5:24 Gretchen Rubin’s background  -6:54 What is happiness? And myths about happiness -7:51 Why we all have to figure out our own happiness project  -10:00 The importance of relationships & how to build healthy, strong and sustainable relationships  -14:02 Common barriers to happiness -21:42 How to form healthy habits -25:41 Anxiety and stress busting ti

From the moment we are born, our cells begin to age. But aging does not have to mean decline. World-renowned surgeon Dr. Steven Gundry has been treating mature patients for most of his career. He knows that everyone thinks they want to live forever, until they hit middle age and witness the suffering of their parents and even their peers. So how do we solve the paradox of wanting to live to a ripe old age—but enjoy the benefits of youth? In this episode I interview renown cardiologist and New York Times bestselling author Dr. Steven Gundry to discuss how we may be living longer but not better, how to reverse the disease of aging and prevent Alzheimers, how some vegetables may actually be harming our health, how lectins could be related to the rise of autoimmune diseases, how to help children develop healthy habits, and so much more!  For more info on Dr. Gundry visit: https://drgundry.com I also highly recommend his books: The Plant Paradox: https://drgundry.com/books/ The Plant Paradox Family Cookbook: https

In this episode I interview functional medicine expert Dr. Frank Lipman on eastern healing traditions that can help improve mental and physical health, how to improve our gut microbiome, how to beat seasonal affective disorder, why fake meat like the impossible burger is bad, the best and worst trends in wellness, and more!  For more information on Dr. Frank Lipman visit: https://drfranklipman.com Visit his wellness center: https://elevenelevenwellness.com Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/DrFrankLipman/ Twitter:https://twitter.com/drfranklipman  Instagram @franklipmanmd Sign up for his weekly newsletter: https://drfranklipman.com/subscribe/   Additional resources: Get my new 21 day brain detox program here: https://theswitch.app Visit my website at www.drleaf.com for more resources, tips, and tools to help you improve and heal your mental health! And be sure to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get even more mental self-care tips delivered to your inbox weekly and to see my upcoming events (you can sign u

Ever get the feeling the world is full of too many distractions? Research shows the ability to stay focused is a competitive advantage, in work and in life. However, in an age of ever-increasing demands on our attention, how do we get the best from technology without letting it get the best of us? In this episode I interview bestselling author, lecturer and investor Nir Eyal on his new book Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life. Nir's writing on technology, psychology, and business, appears in the Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, TechCrunch, and Psychology Today. In today’s episode I interview Nir on how technology has been designed to be addictive, how to break the addiction and become indistractble using his 4 step method, how to teach out children to be indsitractable and better manage technology, and why we need to stop blaming technology for all our mental health problems.  Highlights from this episode: 7:30- How companies design technology and products to be addictive

This episode is from a recent interview Dr. Leaf did on The Cannonball Mindset Podcast with Chad Sanschagrin. You can listen to the original interview here: http://cannonballmindset.libsyn.com/communication-pathologist-and-cognitive-neuroscientist-dr-caroline-leaf   Additional resources:  Get my new 21 day brain detox program here: https://theswitch.app Visit my website at www.drleaf.com for more resources, tips, and tools to help you improve and heal your mental health! And be sure to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get even more mental self-care tips delivered to your inbox weekly and to see my upcoming events (you can sign up at drleaf.com!)   Special offers from our sponsors:   Blinkist: To get your free week trial on Blinkist AND 25% off your subscription go to: https://blinkist.com/drleaf   Superfat Nut Butters: Get 15% off your entire order at https://superfat.com and use code DRLEAF at checkout.   ThirdLove: Get 15% off your ThirdLove order here: http://thirdlove.com/drleaf   Follow me on social

Addiction is something many of us have experienced, whether we ourselves have battled with addiction, guilt and shame, or we know a loved one, friend or family member who is dealing with addiction. According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), 19.7 million American adults (aged 12 and older) battled a substance use disorder in 2017 alone! When it comes to addiction, whether we are talking about addiction to drugs, alcohol, food, sex and so on, people are often faced with conflicting messages: they are damaged goods with little or no hope of overcoming their addiction, or it is all their fault and they are just “bad apples”. Yet reality is far more complicated, and, thankfully, far more hopeful: it is possible to take responsibility for our lives while recognizing and dealing with the negative consequences addiction. In this week’s podcast I speak about addiction and how it is possible to overcome it with Adi Jaffe, Ph.D. who is a nationally recognized expert on mental health, addiction, rel

In this episode Dr. Leaf discusses why we overthink, what happens in our brains when we go into toxic rumination, and how to stop overthinking once and for all. This is a re-airing of one of the most popular episodes form 2019.  Additional resources: SWITCH app: https://theswitch.app Visit my website at drleaf.com for more resources, tips, and tools to help you improve and heal your mental health! And be sure to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get even more mental self-care tips delivered to your inbox weekly and to see my upcoming events (you can sign up at drleaf.com!)   Special offers from our sponsors:   Ritual: Get 10% off your first three months of Ritual multivitamins at www.ritual.com/drleaf   Magic Spoon: Get a variety pack at www.magicspoon.com/drleaf and use code DRLEAF at checkout for free shipping!   Comrad Socks: Get 20% off your order at www.comradsocks.com/drleaf with code DRLEAF   If you enjoyed this episode please leave a 5 review on iTunes, Google Play, or wherever you are listening! A