Podcast Category: Holistic health

Welcome to Episode 166 of The Optimal Body Podcast  Spinal Stenosis: Is it Normal and Are You Doomed? Been diagnosed with Spinal Stenosis? Fear loading the spine or moving around it? DocJen & Dr. Dom

Firstly, Christine discusses how to separate your relationships from socio-cultural expectations and how to best navigate whether a relationship is real, true, and what you’re called for through the way you feel. Furthermore, she shares her best tips in unpacking yourself and that manifests in what it feels like to be loved. Then, she gets into the nitty-gritty about hardships and arguments in relationships, how she defines healthy fighting, and her best tips to getting through downtimes in relationships. Without repressing or recycling emotions, Christine promotes the idea of “feeling your feelings,” explaining the vulnerability and your inner-critic voice, FInally, she explains 4 stages to establishing the most optimal relationship for you!

We have Dr. Kelly Starrett back on the podcast to provide you an insightful rundown on his journey with his knee replacement journey, and how you can optimally navigate online education to optimize your health. With an overemphasis on the ways in which function drives purpose, Dr. Kelly speaks into the importance of education, honing in on finding independence within your own health. Then, Dr. Kelly walks the path of his knee journey, having pushed off knee replacement surgery for 7 years, and why he decided to eventually get surgery after years of training for function. Honing in on educating for function after surgery, Dr. Kelly debunks myths around icing and rest and provides the truth surrounding optimal rehabilitation.

Don Saladino, the celebrity trainer and fitness expert, offers a compelling perspective on aging, goal setting, body positivity, nutrition, and finding a balanced lifestyle for YOU. With an emphasis on individualization and intuition, Don shares how he navigates aesthetic goals with an open and mindful approach, discussing discipline and addressing its fine line with dysregulated habits around eating. In addition to a discussion about setting goals, Don discusses the phenomena of metabolic flexibility and how to approach cravings, calories, and blood sugar.

Consistency, awareness, accountability/community, grace/compassion, individuality. Do these resonate with you? To DocJen ad Dr.Dom, these ideas mold the path to finding what’s optimal within your body and how you can truly begin to feel something different. They dive into The Optimal Body Membership and the Jen Platform, and how these concepts manifest through the toolbox they provide you and empower you with. Let’s tune in!

Luka shines a light on topics of identity, an individual’s narrative, self-esteem, and confidence as characteristics of cultivating a healthy mindset to build healthy habits.  To start off, Luka shares four values that help him cultivate the unique culture that he embodies. He shares the profound effects of collecting role models and how building habits and changing your body influence your narrative, providing his top tips. Luka shares 4 stages to optimizing your mindset: learning, doing, being, and becoming. Through the importance of awareness, he shares mindset shifts during the “becoming” stage.

“You are an athlete if you have a body.” Kaisa, the co-founder of Just Move, spills the truths about movement, recovery, and how it all relates to finding your truth and freedom within the body. Kaisa goes way back to middle school and high school, sharing her journey with navigating body confidence, fitting in, and athletic ability as an adolescent. She shares how she overcame obstacles with body image issues and how she currently strives to look beyond aesthetics and towards performance. She gets vulnerable, sharing her story with injuries, and how it helped her reconnect, respect her body, train smarter, and recover harder. Furthermore, Kaisa shares her insights on truly coaching at a “starting level,” a concept lost in the world of fitness, how the fitness world needs to change its priorities, and what it means to “just move,” touching base on fun, inclusive, and variety in movement. Finally, she discusses the importance of recovery, how to understand what type of recovery you need, her interests in dance, and how she uses movement as a tool to show up for herself, stay consistent, be real with herself, and comprehend that work-fun balance we all strive for. Learn how just starting to move can change the game for you! 

Brian Mackenzie is on for the second time to explain the science behind breath and how it can modulate panic, anxiety, and pain. Brian discusses how we can control our breathing to upregulate or downregulate the body. In light of his Nosevember challenge, Brian dives into the anatomy and physiology of nasal breathing and how it plays into deviated septums, snoring, pain, and switching on the parasympathetic nervous system.

DocJen & Dr. Dom let the truths ring free about cortisone injections. They dive into how cortisone injections work, simply describing how it affects pain and inflammation. They break down cortisone injection categories and provide insight into how glucocorticoids metabolize in the body.  Moreover, they present current perspectives on cortisone injections through research. Keep Moving!

Olympian, Samantha Peszek, shares her journey with confidence and self-talk through her Gymnastics Career. As a high-level and young athlete, specifically, the beam event in gymnastics presented several obstacles that Samantha had to overcome through confidence and the support of others around her. Touching base on how she coaches through burnout in athletes, Samantha shares her insights on how she preaches goal setting and helps athletes deal with perfectionism in sport. Speaking to the illusion of being perfect, she discusses how skills formed through sport are transferrable to other aspects of life and career pathways, sharing her story with reporting. Learn more about Samantha’s coaching and how she addressed the mental obstacles in Gymnastics.