During the summer between 8th and 9th grade, I watched my classmate Jeff go from about 125 lbs to 180 lbs in six weeks. This scrawny, video game nerd turned into a force to be reckoned with through a combination of hard gym workouts and anabolic steroids he bought from his older brother. I'm not sure if you've ever seen a transformation like this firsthand, but it's not something you easily forget.

Enter hormones. They can make you skinny or make you fat. They can give you hot flashes, make you tired, or make you feel young and vital. Your ‘chemical body’ is responsible for how you look and feel most of the time, and yet it's often out of whack. Hormonal imbalance used to be rare and mostly found in older people, but these days you can find kids with massive hormone imbalances at any school around the world. So what do we do?

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Listen & Learn:

• How hormones can impact just about everything
• Why birth control pills, food, stress, age, and environment can all affect our chemical body
• How hormone theory is only a century old
• How hormone research is still new and developing

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Randi Hutter Epstein is a medical writer, author, and journalist. She has written for publications including The New York Times and The Washington Post. She is also a lecturer at Yale University and an adjunct professor at Columbia University School of Journalism.

She is the author of two books: Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth from the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank (2010) and AROUSED: The History of Hormones and How They Control Just About Everything (2018).

Nutritional Tip of the Week:

• Low Fructose Fruits

Links & References from the Show:

• Randi's site
• Randi's Book

Got Questions?

• Send me a voicemail here: Ask Lucas a Question
• Or write to us: podcast@yogabody.com 

Like the Show?

• Leave us a Review on iTunes

Thanks to our sponsor:

• Yoga International, a community of 300,000 students learning about yoga, meditation, and mindful living from hundreds of expert teachers. It has more than 1,000 classes, the most popular of which are 30 Classes in 30 Days Challenge, The Busy Yogi Challenge, and Yoga to Soothe Sciatica with Doug Keller.

  Yoga International is offering listeners of the Yoga Talk Show a free Essentials of Yoga Therapy course when you sign up for a 30-day trial membership.

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Have you ever used a scalp massager made of long, thin wires? For most people, it causes quite the sensation, sending tingles from the back of their neck down their spine. Or maybe you have this reaction when someone whispers in your ear? This pleasurable response to specific auditory and visual stimuli is known as autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR), and is likened to meditation.

ASMR is exploding on the internet right now because it is deeply relaxing, extremely pleasurable, and can serve to relieve anxiety and depression in some cases.

The ASMR movement is mostly made up of YouTubers and DIY fanatics, but there are also a handful of researchers out there gathering information about the real, therapeutic benefits of this response.

On this week's show, you'll meet Craig Richard, PhD, the founder of ASMR University.

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Listen & Learn:

• Why ASMR might be helpful to relieve stress and anxiety
• Why ASMR audio tracks could be more effective than the viral videos online
• How this deeply relaxing, neck tingling sensation can help you relax

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Craig Richard, PhD, first learned about ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) in 2013, but has been experiencing its triggers and effects since childhood. In 2014, he launched ASMRUniversity.com to encourage and report ASMR research and to provide helpful resources to assist with the further understanding of ASMR.

Craig is the cofounder of the ASMR Research Project and has produced several ASMR podcasts. He is a professor in the department of biopharmaceutical sciences at Shenandoah University, School of Pharmacy in Winchester, Virginia and the author of a new book, Brain Tingles, available soon on Amazon.

Nutritional Tip of the Week:

• Chili Peppers

Links & References from the Show:

• ASMR University
• The ASMR Podcast

Got Questions?

• Send me a voicemail here: Ask Lucas a Question
• Or write to us: podcast@yogabody.com 

Like the Show?

• Leave us a Review on iTunes

Thanks to our sponsor:

• Yoga International, a community of 300,000 students learning about yoga, meditation, and mindful living from hundreds of expert teachers. It has more than 1,000 classes, the most popular of which are 30 Classes in 30 Days Challenge, The Busy Yogi Challenge, and Yoga to Soothe Sciatica with Doug Keller.

  Yoga International is offering listeners of the Yoga Talk Show a free Essentials of Yoga Therapy course when you sign up for a 30-day trial membership.

  Learn More

Chronic pain—the most common of which is back pain and digestive pain—affects as many as one in four people. Pain plays a crucial role in the body as a clear sign that something is injured, diseased, or in need of extra care. However, when pain becomes chronic, many times the pain signals sent to the brain no longer correspond with any kind of dysfunction. The pain is literally all in the brain, and faulty neural wiring can ruin your life.

When people are in constant pain, they will try anything: yoga, meditation, acupuncture, cannabis, and, of course, opioids. Sometimes these solutions work, sometimes they don’t, but statistics show that chronic pain is a problem that's getting worse, not better. So what can we do?

On this week's Yoga Talk Show, we will explore a new type of noninvasive, nondrug treatment for pain that involves electrical stimulation to rewire problematic neural connections, otherwise known as Scrambler Therapy®.

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Listen & Learn:

• Why 100 million Americans have chronic pain
• Why pain can be present with or without any underlying condition
• Why the threat-neural matrix complicates your pain
• Why all pain is in the brain, and the solution to all chronic pain is rewiring this mind-body neural fail

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Brendon is the co-founder and CEO of Radiant Pain Relief Centres in Oregon, where he uses an exclusive, FDA-cleared technology called Scrambler Therapy® as a safe and simple way to change the mind-body perception of pain.

Nutritional Tip of the Week:

• Lectins

Links & References from the Show:

• Radiant Pain Relief Centres

Got Questions?

• Send me a voicemail here: Ask Lucas a Question
• Or write to us: podcast@yogabody.com 

Like the Show?

• Leave us a Review on iTunes

Thanks to our sponsor:

• PuraTHRIVE- Discover the breakthrough nutrient delivery system that combines nature and technology to maximize absorption, potency and bioavailability. PuraTHRIVE provides high-quality, guaranteed products that enable people to lead healthier lives. It helps empower people to thrive physically, mentally and spiritually!

  Visit https://purathrive.com/yogabody to get exclusive 10% off for Yoga Talk Show Listeners

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Have you ever seen a yoga student, runner, or CrossFitter with weird crisscrossed tape on their knees? Have you ever experienced knee pain that kept you from doing your favorite activities? Aside from back problems, knee pain is the most common issue I see in my yoga studios, with the inevitable question being what to do about it.

On this week’s Yoga Talk Show, you will meet physiotherapist Lee Herrington, who works with high-level athletes to correct movement dysfunctions, and help them manage and overcome knee pain. His recommendations are very simple, but not at all intuitive.

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Listen & Learn:

• Movement is medicine, you must move to heal
• For better or worse, our knees (and the rest of our bodies) will wear out over time, our job is to manage that gracefully
• Why anterior (front) knee pain is the most common and how alignment in yoga and all other activities can greatly reduce the risk of injury
• How to ‘treat the man, not the scan’ when dealing with knee pain
• Why performance backward thinking is helpful for knee pain

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Dr. Herrington is a physiotherapist, senior lecturer in sports rehabilitation at the University of Salford Manchester, and has published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers. His work focuses on the treatment and rehabilitation of sports injuries, specifically anterior knee pain, hamstring injuries, Subacromial Pain Syndrome (shoulder impingement), the ‘rugby’ shoulder, and rehabilitation following knee surgery (principally ACL reconstruction).

Nutritional Tip of the Week:

• Food Causing Pain

Links & References from the Show:

• Lee on Twitter
• University of Salford Manchester Profile

Got Questions?

• Send me a voicemail here: Ask Lucas a Question
• Or write to us: podcast@yogabody.com 

Like the Show?

• Leave us a Review on iTunes

Thanks to our sponsor:

• PuraTHRIVE- Discover the breakthrough nutrient delivery system that combines nature and technology to maximize absorption, potency and bioavailability. PuraTHRIVE provides high-quality, guaranteed products that enable people to lead healthier lives. It helps empower people to thrive physically, mentally and spiritually!

  Visit https://purathrive.com/yogabody to get exclusive 10% off for Yoga Talk Show Listeners

  Learn More