Live Well Be Well with Sarah Ann Macklin | Health, Lifestyle, Nutrition

Louise O'Neill, award-winning author, joins me to talk about A Bigger Life, her memoir of the devastating breakup she went through, and the year that followed: a dating odyssey from Dublin to Paris, London, New York and Rome, with a different date almost every night.

What we explore together:

•Why rejection cuts so deep, and the belief so many of us carry: "I need to improve myself because I'm not lovable enough"

•The myth that there are no good men left, and how the algorithm feeds scarcity after a breakup

•Her worst dates, from a catfish in France to a frightening walk in Central Park

•Why "do I like them?" is a better question than "do they like me?"

•Falling back in love, and how a relationship can show you where you still need to heal

Love, Sarah Ann 💛

My book 'Healthy Shouldn't Be This Hard': https://www.amazon.co.uk/Healthy-Shouldnt-Be-This-Hard-ebook/dp/B0G1DHNRV5

This episode is sponsored by:

POLSEN HEALTH: The compassionate health tracker. Connecting body and mind with unique stress recovery insights so you can live fully today.

👉 15% off with code LWBW15 at https://polsen.health/

Let's be friends!

📷 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahannmacklin/

📹 Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@livewellbewellsarah

🐦 Twitter: https://x.com/SarahAnnMacklin

📱 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@livewellbewellpodcast

Louise O'Neill:

📚 A Bigger Life: https://lnk.to/ABiggerLife

📷 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oneilllou/

Chapters

00:00 Trailer

01:20 Introduction: A Bigger Life, Eat Pray Love for the Hinge era

01:46 The breakup that came just before 38

03:00 A year of intensive healing: ayahuasca, a shaman and a Catholic priest

03:57 "I need to improve myself because I'm not lovable enough"

05:12 Why rejection brings up feelings of worthlessness

08:06 "If you want a bigger life, you have to take bigger risks"

08:56 Rejection exposure therapy: the more dates, the braver she felt

11:48 What a bigger life means to her now

12:36 "I was sorry that I hadn't left earlier"

14:05 Sponsor break: Polsen Health

15:52 Walking down the aisle without enough self-trust

16:40 The greatest betrayal: not trusting yourself

18:02 "There are no good men left": the dating cesspit myth

19:02 How the algorithm feeds scarcity after a breakup

20:42 The worst date: catfished in France

22:48 The Central Park date that turned frightening

24:02 Seeing someone again, and how to follow up

25:12 Getting ghosted

29:58 Why modern dating feels so hard: we've all been hurt

32:43 "Do I like them?" instead of "Do they like me?"

35:20 "Do not rush": eggs, engagement and the 39th birthday deadline

38:35 Why the date she was least excited about was the best

40:46 Hinge height filters and the six-foot problem

42:13 Casting the net wider: Sarah's house search

45:25 Uncertainty, ambiguity and why risk is liberating

46:42 Staying curious and the fear of ageing

49:04 "Not just a memoir, a manifesto"

51:06 A kiss under the Eiffel Tower and the parallel life

55:46 Turning 41 and the pressure of a new decade

57:46 Tools for constant worry: presence, nature and her dad

59:34 Panic attacks, beta blockers and a cracked tooth

1:02:41 Throwing away the script

1:04:32 Freedom and feeling alive

1:05:34 Falling back in love: the LA fires and meeting on Hinge

1:07:29 "I'm a really good first date": what love showed her still needed healing

1:11:26 Hyper-independence and losing her uncle at 14

1:12:54 "When I was supposed to have lost the love of my life, I had never felt so loved"

1:13:58 What's next: a new novel, West Cork, London and New York

1:16:25 Aliveness, women's health and ageing

1:19:03 The myth that women become less valuable as they age

1:20:06 Male fertility and the clock men don't talk about

1:21:22 Egg freezing and choosing motherhood on your own terms

1:23:04 The child-free friend who shaped her childhood

1:24:16 Choosing to adopt at 38

1:26:45 What does Live Well Be Well mean to you?

1:27:38 Holding on to hope

This week’s Live Well Be Well Moment is with Matt Haig, bestselling author and mental health advocate.

Matt opens up about his shoplifting addiction as a teenager, explaining how it was never about the things he stole, but the dopamine hit, and how getting arrested at 16 was what finally stopped him.

My book ‘Healthy Shouldn’t Be This Hard’:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Healthy-Shouldnt-Be-This-Hard-ebook/dp/B0G1DHNRV5

📖 If this resonates, you can join the thousands who read The Compassionate Cure each week.

https://sarahmacklin.substack.com/

Let’s be friends!

📷 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahannmacklin/

📹 Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@livewellbewellsarah

🐦 Twitter: https://x.com/SarahAnnMacklin

📱 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@livewellbewellpodcast

💌 Newsletter: https://sarahmacklin.substack.com/

This week’s Live Well Be Well Moment is with Silva Neves, an accredited psychosexual and relationship therapist.

Silva unpacks the manosphere, explaining why it’s less about ideology and more about money and fear, before sharing his clinical perspective on Bonnie Blue and the extreme end of the shame-free spectrum.

My book ‘Healthy Shouldn’t Be This Hard’:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Healthy-Shouldnt-Be-This-Hard-ebook/dp/B0G1DHNRV5

📖 If this resonates, you can join the thousands who read The Compassionate Cure each week.

https://sarahmacklin.substack.com/

Let’s be friends!

📷 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahannmacklin/

📹 Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@livewellbewellsarah

🐦 Twitter: https://x.com/SarahAnnMacklin

📱 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@livewellbewellpodcast

💌 Newsletter: https://sarahmacklin.substack.com/

This week I’m joined by Frank Anderson, Harvard-trained psychiatrist, psychotherapist and one of the leading voices in trauma treatment, for a conversation that goes far beyond traditional therapy.

What we explore together:

• Why trauma treatment was never meant to be a single method, and what 11 years of psychoanalysis taught him about its limits

• The viral “does trauma live in the brain or the body” debate, and what his close friend Bessel van der Kolk actually meant by The Body Keeps the Score

• Why attraction is often about unhealed wounding, not love, and how it shaped his own first marriage

• What it actually looks like to heal trauma through the body, not just by talking about it

• Why he believes we’re entering “the era of the body,” and what that means for AI and disconnection

Love, Sarah Ann 💛

My book, Healthy Shouldn’t Be This Hard:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Healthy-Shouldnt-Be-This-Hard-ebook/dp/B0G1DHNRV5

This episode is sponsored by:

POLSEN HEALTH: The compassionate health tracker. Connecting body and mind with unique stress recovery insights so you can live fully today.

👉 15% off with code LWBW15 at https://polsen.health/

📖 If this resonates, you can join the thousands who read The Compassionate Cure each week.

https://sarahmacklin.substack.com/

Let’s be friends!

📷 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahannmacklin/

📹 Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@livewellbewellsarah

🐦 Twitter: https://x.com/SarahAnnMacklin

📱 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@livewellbewellpodcast

Frank Anderson:

🔗 Website: https://www.frankandersonmd.com

📷 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/frank_andersonmd/

Chapters

00:00 Introduction

01:40 Why “trauma” is such a loaded word to open with

02:08 Generational reactions to trauma: boomer denial vs. Gen Z over-identification

03:59 Changing the whole paradigm on trauma

05:07 Why therapy alone doesn’t work for trauma

05:25 11 years of psychoanalysis and The Integrated Path to Healing Trauma

08:34 “Trauma is a violation of agency”

09:34 Regaining self-trust and reconnecting to your intuition

10:30 His first marriage and recreating his parents’ dynamic

12:37 Sponsor break: Polsen Health

14:47 People pleasing as a survival strategy, not a trauma response

18:03 The origin of his own people-pleasing: his father, Harvard and “To Be Loved”

22:02 The Bessel van der Kolk “Body Keeps the Score” debate

23:14 Working with celebrity clients in LA, and being attacked for something he didn’t do

27:18 Setting the record straight: it’s not brain OR body, it’s both

29:57 “Nobody’s trauma is the same, it’s like your fingerprint”

32:02 The pushback on his next book’s proposed title

33:52 What resilience actually is, and his own “baby in a crib” trauma

39:54 Blending science and spirituality

42:55 How trauma shows up as physical illness (asthma, migraines, back pain)

45:11 The choking sensation and learning to speak his truth

47:58 Preverbal trauma and healing through the body

50:45 Journaling, the Sarno method, and a client physically releasing repressed rage

56:17 Why trauma memories are stored differently (Ruth Lanius)

57:34 Why Frank won’t do a session without movement

58:14 Healing chronic pain through surfing and ecstatic dance

59:54 Why therapy’s 50-minutes-a-week format fights neuroplasticity

1:00:38 Healing a jellyfish-sting trauma through surfing after the Palisades fire

1:03:11 Trauma blocks love, and love blocks trauma

1:04:28 Why we’re attracted to people with the same wound

1:08:16 “Love is my husband”: 27 years together

1:16:27 Healthy love, nervous systems, and the difference between an emotion and a reaction

1:23:18 Internal Family Systems and the difference between self and soul

1:29:15 Why trauma resists a single definition

1:33:16 Holding uncertainty in the healing process

1:38:28 AI, disconnection, and “the era of the body”

1:45:27 Why Frank moved to Hollywood

1:46:19 Frank’s closing thesis: healing is possible

1:47:44 What does Live Well Be Well mean to you?

This week’s Live Well Be Well Moment is with Matt Haig, bestselling author and mental health advocate.

Matt talks about being diagnosed with ADHD in his mid-40s, why he hates the word “diagnosis,” and the years of feeling like “a weirdo” before he understood why.

My book ‘Healthy Shouldn’t Be This Hard’:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Healthy-Shouldnt-Be-This-Hard-ebook/dp/B0G1DHNRV5

📖 If this resonates, you can join the thousands who read The Compassionate Cure each week.

https://sarahmacklin.substack.com/

Let’s be friends!

📷 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahannmacklin/

📹 Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@livewellbewellsarah

🐦 Twitter: https://x.com/SarahAnnMacklin

📱 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@livewellbewellpodcast

💌 Newsletter: https://sarahmacklin.substack.com/

This week’s Live Well Be Well Moment is with Silva Neves, an accredited psychosexual and relationship therapist.

Silva explains why most fantasies, kinks and fetishes are far more normal than we assume, and how it’s actually shame, not the kink itself, that quietly shuts down honest sexual communication in long-term relationships.

My book ‘Healthy Shouldn’t Be This Hard’:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Healthy-Shouldnt-Be-This-Hard-ebook/dp/B0G1DHNRV5

📖 If this resonates, you can join the thousands who read The Compassionate Cure each week.

https://sarahmacklin.substack.com/

Let’s be friends!

📷 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahannmacklin/

📹 Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@livewellbewellsarah

🐦 Twitter: https://x.com/SarahAnnMacklin

📱 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@livewellbewellpodcast

💌 Newsletter: https://sarahmacklin.substack.com/

This week I'm joined by Dr Karan Rajan, NHS surgeon turned bestselling author and Chief of Science at Throne Science, for a conversation about optimisation culture: wearables, peptides, Bryan Johnson, and why more data isn't always better data.

What we explore together:

•His own health scare at 28, when a routine blood test uncovered fatty liver disease from a low-fibre diet

•Why "the illusion of health" might be the real cost of the wearable and wellness boom

•Bryan Johnson, colonoscopies, and why the most measured man in history still missed the basics

•The peptides debate: survivorship bias, zero human trial data, and what to actually ask before you try one

•A hospice nurse's deathbed regrets, and what they reveal about how we're really spending our time

•Creatine's kidney false alarm, and the simple blood test that solved it

•The "fever dream" that became Throne Science, and the mission to catch colon cancer early

Love, Sarah Ann 💛

My book 'Healthy Shouldn't Be This Hard': https://www.amazon.co.uk/Healthy-Shouldnt-Be-This-Hard-ebook/dp/B0G1DHNRV5

This episode is sponsored by:

POLSEN HEALTH: The compassionate health tracker. Connecting body and mind with unique stress recovery insights so you can live fully today.

👉 15% off with code LWBW15 at https://polsen.health/

PULSETTO: Vagus nerve stimulation for stress, sleep and calm.

👉 Use code SARAHANN at https://pulsetto.sjv.io/SARAHANN

📖 If this resonates, you can join the thousands who read The Compassionate Cure each week.

https://sarahmacklin.substack.com/

Let's be friends!

📷 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahannmacklin/

📹 Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@livewellbewellsarah

🐦 Twitter: https://x.com/SarahAnnMacklin

📱 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@livewellbewellpodcast

Dr Karan Rajan:

🔗 Throne Science: https://www.thronescience.com

📷 Instagram/TikTok/YouTube: @DrKaranRajan

Chapters

00:00 Introduction

01:05 Welcome + what's interesting Karan right now

02:19 His own health scare at 28: fatty liver, high cholesterol, low fibre

04:10 Wearables, optimisation culture and "orthosomnia"

05:56 Bryan Johnson: most measured human in history, still skipped his colonoscopy

14:51 Rick Rubin, Wilderness festival

16:12 "Illusion of health": wearables, data and fragility wrapped in a wellness aesthetic

19:09 The hospice nurse's deathbed regrets

20:23 The red cup trick, and why coffee helps you poop

24:22 Sugar substitutes and the cognitive-decline headline, unpacked

38:21 Wireless headphones and the cysts claim, debunked

42:54 Creatine and cognitive health

43:35 The kidney false alarm, and the test that solved it

49:47 Peptides: what they actually are

53:09 Survivorship bias and the total lack of human trial data

59:54 The Enhanced Games and performance enhancers

1:03:51 His own burnout and productivity

1:09:35 Why success and balance aren't compatible in this season of life

1:15:31 The Throne Science origin story

1:19:22 Sarah's own polyposis syndrome reveal

1:23:19 Closing: links and sign-off

This week’s Live Well Be Well Moment is with Dr Mark Horowitz, lead author of the Maudsley Deprescribing Guidelines, the UK NHS’s official guidance on safely stopping psychiatric medication.

This is a moment from the episode that stuck with me: Dr Horowitz explains the liquid tapering method for coming off antidepressants, the non-linear dose-response curve behind that “jumping off a cliff” feeling, and what a genuinely safe, gradual reduction can actually look like.

My book ‘Healthy Shouldn’t Be This Hard’:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Healthy-Shouldnt-Be-This-Hard-ebook/dp/B0G1DHNRV5

This episode is sponsored by:

POLSEN HEALTH: The compassionate health tracker. Connecting body and mind with unique stress recovery insights so you can live fully today.

👉 15% off with code LWBW15 at https://polsen.health/

PULSETTO: Vagus nerve stimulation for stress, sleep and calm.

👉 Use code SARAHANN at https://pulsetto.sjv.io/SARAHANN

📖 If this resonates, you can join the thousands who read The Compassionate Cure each week.

https://sarahmacklin.substack.com/

Let’s be friends!

📷 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahannmacklin/

📹 Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@livewellbewellsarah

🐦 Twitter: https://x.com/SarahAnnMacklin

📱 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@livewellbewellpodcast

💌 Newsletter: https://sarahmacklin.substack.com/

This week’s Live Well Be Well Moment is with Arthur Brooks, Harvard happiness researcher and #1 New York Times bestselling author.

Why does actually reaching your goals so rarely make you feel as good as you expected?

Arthur breaks down the arrival fallacy and the real neuroscience behind that dopamine crash, and what it means for how you should be chasing success in the first place.

My book ‘Healthy Shouldn’t Be This Hard’:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Healthy-Shouldnt-Be-This-Hard-ebook/dp/B0G1DHNRV5

This episode is sponsored by:

POLSEN HEALTH: The compassionate health tracker. Connecting body and mind with unique stress recovery insights so you can live fully today.

👉 15% off with code LWBW15 at https://polsen.health/

PULSETTO: Vagus nerve stimulation for stress, sleep and calm.

👉 Use code SARAHANN at https://pulsetto.sjv.io/SARAHANN

📖 If this resonates, you can join the thousands who read The Compassionate Cure each week.

https://sarahmacklin.substack.com/

Let’s be friends!

📷 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahannmacklin/

📹 Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@livewellbewellsarah

🐦 Twitter: https://x.com/SarahAnnMacklin

📱 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@livewellbewellpodcast

💌 Newsletter: https://sarahmacklin.substack.com/

ADHD diagnoses have risen 200% in the last five years. Sarah Warley, founder of BeBright and The Key Clinic, says that’s not overdiagnosis. It’s ancient biology trying to cope with a modern environment it was never built for.

She joins Sarah Ann to unpack what’s actually changed, and why the answer isn’t as simple as real or not real.

Full episode out now: search ‘Live Well Be Well’ on YouTube & Spotify.