HER

When Jillian Richardson moved to New York City, she realized what it meant to be truly lonely for the first time. She had no consistent community - people who would wonder where I was if I didn't show up. Jillian was disconnected.

Turns out, loneliness is a huge issue in the United States. The average American only has one close friend, and 75% of people are not satisfied with their friendships. The planet is filled with people who feel like they don't matter. That's pretty bleak, right? Yet this feeling is rooted in something even deeper and more primal than a need for conversation. What we really desire is intimacy, and to feel like we belong. In order to make that happen, we need to fundamentally change our social lives. 

Jillian Richardson is a coach, bestselling author, and connection expert. She’s also the founder of The Joy List, a weekly newsletter of community-centered events in NYC. Jillian helps people learn the skills to connect more deeply to themselves and others, and has inspired thousands through her workshops, interviews, and public speaking engagements. Jillian loves everything under the umbrella of connection and dives into topics from friendship to dating and spirituality.

She joins Dr. Pam to talk about creating true, lasting connections in our modern world, finding your people, and her book Unlonely Planet: How Healthy Congregations Can Change the World.

Let's get down to the bone here. Many women are confused about how to optimize bone health.

Well, we're going to help you with this edition of Healthy Nutrition Nudges segment talking all about bone health and calcium-rich foods. 

Our chef in residence Chef Abbie has been a Registered Dietitian for more than a decade, and a chef for twice as long as that.

 

Chef Abbie & Dr. Pam talk about anatomy, where you can find vitamin D in foods and exercise for healthy bones. 


Tune in on the first Thursday of each month for tips from Chef Abbie, right here on HER. 

Raw. Authentic. Witty. Those are just a few words that describe our guest Jen Mann. And with a blog called "People I Want to Punch In The Throat," they make sense.

Jen Mann had what appeared to be a perfect life: a successful career as a bestselling author and award-winning blogger, a devoted husband, teenage kids who weren’t total jerks, and a badass minivan. So imagine her surprise when, at forty-seven years old, a midlife crisis kicked her straight in the ladybits.

Today she joins us to talk about her crisis and the book it spawned, "Midlife Bites: Anyone Else Falling Apart, Or Is It Just Me?" Jen and Dr. Pam talk all about hitting the big 5-0, putting yourself out there, being better at saying yes, and how to make some effin friends.

Most people don't look forward to heading into their doctor's office, or their annual OBGYN exam. Office spaces are often sterile environments, that aren't exactly welcoming. But what if your OBGYN office offered yoga, ayurvedic wellness, nutrition, and more in a calm and pleasant environment. 

As a healthcare expert, Dr. Shepherd strives to educate people on how to address their physical, sexual, and emotional health. She currently sits on the advisory boards for Ro Medicine, Women's Health Magazine, Abbvie, Myovant, Responsum, Hologic, and HealthyWomen.org. In her Dallas practice, she works with a team of therapists, yoga instructors, Ayurvedic wellness coaches, nutritionists, exercise specialists, and other health professionals dedicated to women’s health.

Jessica Shepherd MD, MBA, FACOG, is a board-certified OB-GYN and the Chief Medical Officer for Verywell Health. She is the founder and CEO of Sanctum Med + Wellness, a wellness concierge practice, and is affiliated with Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, Texas.

Dr. Shepherd sits down with Dr. Pam to talk about menopause, creating a safe and comforting space for annual OBGYN visits, and how we can continue to make women's health care better, consistent and reliable.

No one wants to talk about death. Hell, most physicians don't want to cover the topic. But today's episode is all about just that, the art of dying.

But don't think of this as a complete downer episode.  It's all part of our life journey.

Today's guest is an expert in the art of human death. Lydia Dugdale MD, MAR, is the Dorothy L. and Daniel H. Silberberg Associate Professor of Medicine and Director of the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at Columbia University. Prior to her 2019 move to Columbia, she was Associate Director of the Program for Biomedical Ethics and founding Co-Director of the Program for Medicine, Spirituality, and Religion at Yale School of Medicine. She is an internal medicine primary care doctor and medical ethicist.

Her first book, Dying in the Twenty-First Century, provides the theoretical grounding for this current book, The Lost Art Of Dying. In it, Dr. Dugdale offers a hopeful perspective on death and dying as she shows us how to adapt the wisdom from the past to our lives today. The Lost Art of Dying is a vital, affecting book that reconsiders death, death culture, and how we can transform how we live each day, including our last.

Everywhere you go you hear The Mediterranean Diet is THE ONE. Combining plant nutrition, protein, and a slower lifestyle. It's a lovely balance! But what really is the hype all about?

Well luckily, our resident favorite chef wrote a book about the whole thing.

Our go-to on all things healthy nutrition for women, Chef Abbie has been a Registered Dietitian for more than a decade, and a chef for twice as long as that.

 

In this April edition of Healthy Nutrition Nudges, we're talking about Chef Abbie's book The Mediterranean DASH Diet, what the ideal plate looks like if you're eating this way and all of the juicy benefits from this diet & lifestyle change. 


Tune in on the first Thursday of each month for tips from Chef Abbie, right here on HER. 

Sound is all around us but because we live in a visually biased world, we have lost track of how important sound is.

That is the mission behind Dr. Nina Kraus' work, to remind us of the power of sound. She says scientists have trouble communicating their research to the masses, and she wants to help us fully understand the sonic world we live in.

Nina Kraus, Ph.D., is a scientist, inventor, and amateur musician who studies the biology of auditory learning. She began her career measuring responses from single auditory neurons and was one of the first to show that the adult nervous system has the potential for reorganization following learning; these insights in basic biology galvanized her to investigate auditory learning in humans.

In her latest book In Of Sound Mind, Dr.Kraus examines the partnership of sound and brain, showing for the first time that the processing of sound drives many of the brain's core functions. Kraus does on to explore what goes on in our brains when we hear a word--or a chord, or a meow, or a screech.

We’ve long thought of anxiety as a “neck up” problem—a problem of brain chemistry and psychology. But now, in The Anatomy of Anxiety acclaimed psychiatrist, Dr. Ellen Vora offers nothing less than a paradigm shift in the way we understand anxiety and mental health.

Dr. Vora suggests that the symptoms of anxiety are frequently the result of physical imbalance—that is, anxiety is a whole-body condition, not simply a brain condition. More than 40 million Americans are suffering from anxiety in any given year (a number that has only increased as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic), add to that the woeful lack of accessibility and affordability of mental health, anxiety is everywhere. 

We'll hear about false anxiety vs true anxiety, managing the feelings that come up during meditation and even talk about wrapping our heads around death.

Dr. Pam is quite active on Twitter, with a community including women who have gone through all kinds of physical and mental transformations. One of them is our guest today, Julie Backhouse

Julie Backhouse is a 56-year-old woman from Milton Keynes in the UK. Her starting weight was 374lbs and her current weight is 164 lbs. Julie ran her first marathon last year, and plans on running the London Marathon this year!

She has been married to her husband Brian for 18 years who’s also lost a huge amount of weight supporting Julie on her fitness journey. She has recently begun weight training and following a Keto lifestyle, and enjoys landscape gardening in her free time.

Julie joins us today to talk all about her journey, losing a husband and a cancer diagnosis, and staying committed to her process throughout all of that.

One of Tara Rajendran's earliest memories is watching her mother playing music from their big old radio to her dying grandmother, and how hearing those songs brought them both some peace.

As a medical student, Tara also happened to read the book which won the Pulitzer of 2011, ‘The Emperor of All Maladies - A Story of Cancer’. These two events significantly influenced and inspired Tara to spend more time rotating in Oncology departments in India and the United States.

In this episode, Tara shares her journey to combine her 2 passions of music and cancer research, and to become the first physician-musician to launch an impactful sparking cross-disciplinary lecture-concert series advocating the significance of using a traditional Indian instrument called the ‘Veena’ for palliative medicine/oncology.