Romantic relationships are key to personal wellness, and texting is the main way people communicate when dating. Here, Dr. Mimi Winsberg (pictured above), a Harvard- and Stanford-educated psychiatrist and Facebook’s former in-house psychiatrist, provides guidance in conversation with Medcan’s Dr. Jack Muskat. Texting, says Dr. Winsberg, “is now the lingua franca of love.”

One measure of aerobic fitness is VO2max—and one ranking of the best-ever VO2max scores features five cross-country skiers in the top 10 results. So for our Winter Olympic special, host Shaun Francis and his team investigated what’s so great about cross-country skiing.

COVID-19’s Omicron variant is airborne-transmitted. So does it make sense to buy a HEPA filter to reduce spread? Or are there more cost-efficient ways to increase safety? We assembled a panel of experts to provide their guidance, including Medcan Medical Advisory Services team members, Dr. Peter Nord and Dr. Matthew Burnstein.

Age-related inflammation, or “inflammaging,” has recently been linked to higher risks of chronic disease, dementia and Alzheimer's. But how can we know which foods spur inflammaging? Leslie Beck provides guidance with our host Shaun Francis.

We’ve spent 99 episodes interviewing global experts about optimal wellness. So for our 100th episode, host Shaun Francis and his team turned the mic over to listeners and explored audience-submitted Eat, Move and Think stories. Also: An Omicron COVID-19 update from Medcan’s chief medical officer, Dr. Peter Nord.

Life can be difficult. Whatever we’re enduring—a global pandemic? a difficult medical diagnosis?—humour can be an important coping tool. In this episode, we explore how comedians Jessica Holmes (Royal Canadian Air Farce, The Holmes Show) and mental health comedian Ryan Zeitz use humour to get through tough times—and what the rest of us can learn from them.

Many of us have goals we want to accomplish. Some of us will achieve them. Others won’t. University of Victoria exercise psychologist Dr. Ryan Rhodes has devoted his career to determining why people don’t do the things they want to do—and devised strategies to help. (Encore episode.)

Former insomniac and ABC News anchor Diane Macedo’s new book, The Sleep Fix, includes practical, proven and surprising solutions for insomnia. In episode 97, Macedo joins Medcan’s Dr. Aisha Khatib.

When she was 17, Samra Zafar was forced to marry an older man she’d never met and move to Canada with him. Eventually, she gained the courage to walk away, and build a new life for herself and her daughters. Now, Zafar is an international speaker, a bestselling author and a med school student at McMaster University. Here, she shares her riveting story with Dr. Jack Muskat, and provides encouragement on how to survive, and even thrive, after difficult situations.

Eat Move Think experts nutritionist Leslie Beck (eat), our host Shaun Francis (move), psychologist Dr. Jack Muskat (think) and Dr. Peter Nord (medicine) discuss the year that was, make their picks for the wellness trend that dominated the last 12 months, and speculate about what’s to come in 2022.

Does your local Starbucks barista make a mean frappuccino? Perhaps that’s because their company provides them with one of the most comprehensive wellness benefits packages around. Each Starbucks “partner” who works 20 hours a week gets $5,000 for mental health support every year, among other perks. Here, Medcan Chief Growth Officer Bronwen Evans chats with Starbucks Canada VP of Partner Resources Cara Beck.

Keijo Taivassalo is 82 years old, and at the 2021 Boston Marathon he demolished the competition, winning his age group by more than 30 minutes. We think Keijo is the embodiment of the Eat Move Think approach to living a long and healthy life. So what’s his secret? We had Medcan’s chief medical officer, Dr. Peter Nord, sit down with Keijo to explore the life of the master marathoner, and the lessons the rest of us can draw from it.

Low-fat, sugar-free, zero carb….oh my! Society has come up with every diet imaginable in our journey toward living healthy, but rates of obesity continue to rise. Food journalist Mark Schatzker argues that tampering with the food we eat has harmed our ability to properly feed ourselves. Medcan Director of Food and Nutrition Leslie Beck chats with Schatzker about his new book, The End of Craving, what’s so bad about manufactured additives, artificial sweeteners, and the puzzling paradox of Italian cuisine.

Should we break up our days with short bouts of exercise? Should we trade the single 45-minute workout with three 15-minute bouts, or even smaller units of physical activity? According to The One-Minute Workout author and McMaster kinesiology professor Martin Gibala, a series of short exercise bursts distributed throughout the day provides a wide variety of health and longevity benefits. In this episode, Prof. Gibala chats with host Shaun Francis about the benefits of exercise snacking, and how to do it right.

Marc Lewis, neuroscientist, former opiate addict and author of Memoirs of an Addicted Brain, believes that addiction rates increased recently because lockdowns deprived people of the physical proximity to loved ones that the brain finds so nourishing. Here, he explores his thesis with Medcan’s clinical director of mental health, Dr. Jack Muskat.

The growing field of art therapy argues that paintings and sculpture can improve your wellness. In collaboration with Art Toronto, host Shaun Francis examines the evidence with such experts as the contemporary artist Marcel Dzama, RxArt founder Diane Brown, Sinai Health psychiatrist-in-chief Dr. Lesley Wiesenfeld and Montreal Museum of Fine Arts art therapist Stephen Legari. Plus: Medcan’s art strategist, Stacy Francis, discusses her innovative approach to art.

There are a lot of self-help books out there, but none of them are written by a hockey legend with four Olympic gold medals and a medical degree. Hayley Wickenheiser’s extraordinary success as a woman in a male-dominated sport happened because of her remarkable grit and resilience. In this episode, she chats with Medcan’s Chief People & Growth Officer Bronwen Evans about her new book, Over the Boards: Lessons from the Ice, and tells stories of the moments and mentors that made her who she is.

Fermented foods are all the rage. Recently, Stanford scientists Dr. Christopher Gardner (above right) and Dr. Justin Sonnenburg (at left) established that eating a diet high in fermented foods promotes a healthier, more diverse gut microbiome, and lowers inflammation. In this episode, they chat with Medcan Director of Food and Nutrition Leslie Beck about their groundbreaking new study.

Want a cheat sheet on how to extend your life, while staying healthy and happy along the way? Medcan Chief Medical Officer Dr. Peter Nord has been a sailor for more than 50 years. He noticed that his fellow sailors are staying incredibly fit, sharp and healthy well into their old age. This week, Dr. Nord joins host Shaun Francis to describe five secrets of longevity drawn from the sailor’s lifestyle.

“Psychedelics saved my life,” says Payton Nyquvest. “Now [I’m] on a mission to pay that forward.” Nyquvest is the CEO of Numinus Wellness, a publicly traded Vancouver start-up that manufactures MDMA and psilocybin for clinical drug trials. The intent is to determine how effective they are as a therapy for mental illness. In this episode, the second of two parts, host Shaun Francis walks Nyquvest through his fascinating life story, and his predictions for the future of psychedelic therapies.