They’re portrayed as a mechanism to achieve self-knowledge in the Amazon Prime show, Nine Perfect Strangers. They were the subject of promising clinical trials in the New England Journal of Medicine and Nature Medicine. So is the buzz about psychedelics justified? What’s the deal with microdosing? And exactly which mental illnesses might benefit from psychedelic therapies? Psychopharmacologist Dr. Roger McIntyre and Dr. Ishrat Husain discuss the latest scientific developments for psilocybin, MDMA, ketamine and more.

Our wellness as individuals depends on the extent we feel like we belong in community settings at work, when socializing, and at home. But how can today’s leaders encourage strong ties among coworkers when so many are working virtually? Host Shaun Francis explores the challenge of creating strong social bonds with climbing expedition leader Scott Kress of Summit Team Building.

What’s the difference between getting through the day and performing at your absolute best? A whole lot, argues Dr. Greg Wells—and he wants to help you get there. Dr. Wells is a physiologist who takes the latest training techniques from elite athletics and applies them to corporate executives. On this week’s episode, Dr. Wells joins host and Medcan CEO Shaun Francis to discuss the benefits of recovery, why we all need to be thinking about how to sleep better and how to optimize our lives for the best results.

Remember when everyone thought things would be back to normal by September? Instead, children are returning to classrooms with caseloads climbing. So how should parents prep kids for the return to in-person schooling? Is it safe? Would they be better off being taught virtually? And when should we expect vaccines to be approved for those who are under the age of 12? For guidance, we turned to a pair of Medcan experts: Dr. Janice Weiss, director of child and youth, and Dr. Jack Muskat, clinical director of mental health.

How much protein do you need if you’re trying to lose weight but build muscle? What’s better—plant- or animal-based protein? Can you consume too much protein? In an interview with protein expert and McMaster Prof. Stuart Phillips, guest host Leslie Beck tackles these questions and more.

How do you come to terms with a life-changing health diagnosis? That’s exactly what Taylor Efford—a Toronto-based content creator, comedian and actor with a large social media following—had to confront last year when she was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. This week, she sits down with Dr. Jack Muskat, clinical director of mental health at Medcan, to talk about how she stayed resilient through it all.

When Canadian rugby star Phil Mackenzie left the sport, he had to redefine his relationship to fitness. That led him to launching Leansquad, an incredibly popular online business dedicated to helping people get fit and stay healthy, and becoming one of the most influential Canadians in the industry. On this week’s episode, he sits down with host and Medcan CEO Shaun Francis to discuss his rugby career, how he made the transition from athlete to trainer and how his fitness mindset has evolved.

Getting adequate mental health care is too difficult. Where do you go? Who do you turn to? We need to change this—fast, says Dr. David Goldbloom, celebrated psychiatrist and the senior medical advisor for Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). Dr. Goldbloom has actual solutions to some of our problems, and he shares them in his new book, We Can Do Better. This week, he joins Medcan CEO Shaun Francis to discuss how we can reinvent our mental health care system and his hopes for the future.

Can you imagine the pressure that Olympians are feeling in Tokyo right now? Dane Jensen, author of The Power of Pressure, is the guy elite athletes and coaches call when they need help handling that pressure. Jensen believes that we can not only learn to manage pressure, but use it to our advantage—and his invaluable Olympic-level advice can be applied to our own pressure-filled lives, too. This week, Jensen joins Medcan CEO Shaun Francis to discuss his book and share some of his best coping strategies.

Gyms have been closed for months. Now, with fitness centres reopening across Canada, we have an opportunity. We can get back into our fitness regimens—or start a new one. This week, Stephen Salzmann, Medcan director of fitness, and fitness manager Anna Topali join executive producer Christopher Shulgan to discuss how to form an exercise habit that’s part of our daily lives, and not just a chore we force ourselves to do.

We’re back again this week with Do Nothing author Celeste Headlee, whose conversation with Dr. Jack Muskat, Medcan’s clinical director of mental health, was so captivating, we had to dedicate two episodes to it. This week, Dr. Muskat and Headlee dive into the lifestyle changes we should all be making in order to break out of this vicious work cycle we’re trapped in and embrace leisure.

It’s an age-old story: work hard and you’ll find success and happiness. Then why do so many of us end up burned out—even after scoring that dream promotion? For one, that story we tell ourselves is actually a relatively new one that has altered the way we work for the worse, author Celeste Headlee argues in her book Do Nothing. In part one of a two-parter, Headlee joins Dr. Jack Muskat, Medcan clinical director of mental health, to discuss how we became obsessed with productivity and why we need to relax.

If you could take a pill that helped you live longer, would you? The good news is, you don’t need a prescription at all—you just need to move. Yet, many of us don’t meet the minimum recommended levels of movement; in fact, 1.5 billion people around the world are so inactive they are at greater risk of everything from heart disease to cancer and dementia. Journalist Peter Walker, author of The Miracle Pill, joins us to discuss how our world discourages movement, and what we need to do to change it.

To increase our chances of living long, healthy lives, we need to be doing more than exercising and eating well—we need strong, supportive social networks too. On this week’s episode, journalist Marta Zaraska joins us to discuss her latest book, Growing Young, and the science-based case for how friendship and kindness can help us live to 100.

In October 2019, Dr. Steven Taylor published his eerily timed book, The Psychology of Pandemics, just weeks before the first cases of COVID-19 were discovered in Wuhan. This week, he joins guest host Dr. Jack Muskat, Medcan’s clinical director of mental health, to discuss the lessons we can learn from pandemics and predict what the future of mental health may look like post-COVID. He also explores the potential for an oncoming Roaring ‘20s.

During the pandemic we’ve been using more disinfectant and hand sanitizer than ever. Such products kill germs. But the hygiene hypothesis argues that, to function properly, the human immune system requires a diverse microbiome of germs. Has the pandemic messed up the microbiome? Microbiologist Brett Finlay joins Dr. Peter Nord to investigate.

As the global vaccination campaign continues, questions abound. Is it safe to mix and match different vaccines? And: Will COVID-19 ever end? Medcan’s Medical Advisory Services team of expert physicians join host and CEO Shaun Francis to break down the latest information and provide need-to-know guidance.

Regenerative cell therapy may help grow human replacement parts for everything from soft-tissue sports injuries to wrinkle-free skin. Commercial cell banking firms store younger cells in the hopes they can one day be used for such therapies. But is the price of storage worth it? Medcan Director of Genetics Allison Hazell interviews Drew Taylor of Acorn Biolabs. 

The holistic psychologist Dr. Nicole LePera decided that traditional therapy wasn’t working for her, or her clients. So she used social media to create a community of motivated #selfhealers, and wrote a book, the recent New York Times bestseller, How To Do the Work. Here, Dr. LePera is in conversation with Medcan’s clinical director of mental health, Dr. Jack Muskat.

It is an activity associated with cutting your risk of death from COVID by two and a half times, and cutting risk of developing severe COVID by two times. That activity is exercise, and the study that established its power as a modifiable risk factor against the coronavirus was led by Dr. Robert Sallis, past president of the American College of Sports Medicine. Here, he’s in conversation with Medcan chief medical officer Dr. Peter Nord.