The Advisor with Stacey Chillemi

Some lives are built to last — Victor Bretting's runs eight generations deep in Texas soil. A childhood shaped by a missing father, a tireless mother, and nearly 50 years in concrete construction gave him a masterclass in accountability, perseverance, and what legacy actually means. In this episode, Victor gets honest about failed marriages, emotional walls, and the realization that healing starts...

Emotional literacy is not something you teach a child with a talk. It is something they absorb by watching you, every time you name a feeling out loud, own a mistake, or sit with an uncomfortable emotion instead of burying it. Dr. Deana Plaskon, licensed clinical mental health expert and author of Bella and Bird the Emotion Explorers, explains why the adult in the room is always the real lesson. W...

Hydrogen therapy is one of the fastest-growing areas in health science, and most of the products being sold are missing the single component that makes it work. Pure hydrogen is electrically neutral — it cannot neutralize free radicals or stop oxidative damage on its own. George Wiseman, founder of Eagle Research and nearly four decades into his research on Brown's Gas, explains the third gas his...

You are not overreacting. You may just be remembering. Trauma-informed life coach and author Ernest Ellender, PhD, explains why a small moment can trigger a large emotional response, and how to catch the pattern before it takes over. He unpacks how childhood stress shows up in adult confidence, work habits, relationships, and the guilt that follows rest.  -------------------------------------...

Gut skin connection explains the mirror moment so many women know: doing everything right and still seeing dull skin, redness, and hair in the drain. The problem is not the products. Ayurveda teaches that the gut whispers while the skin and scalp scream, and a dysregulated nervous system shows up on your face first. Mangala D'Sa, an Ayurvedic practitioner and founder of Chasma Skin, spent years ch...

Forty dark, urgent paintings, finished in a rush. Days later, the diagnosis. Emotional healing is usually sold as talking it through, and that leaves out everyone who cannot find the words. There is another route, and it runs through the body. Brett Ashby, an Australian performance artist and cancer survivor who paints portraits while riding a skateboard, has spent a decade showing what expression...

Weight loss that won't budge isn't a willpower problem — your hypothalamus is defending a weight your body thinks is safe, and every diet you've tried may have made that defense stronger. Deborah Maragopoulos, a board-certified Family Nurse Practitioner with 30 years in neuroendocrinology, breaks down leptin resistance, the cortisol-insulin-thyroid triad, why GLP-1 medications only push one button...

You are not overwhelmed because you are weak. You are overwhelmed because you care. Sustainability leader Paula Rose Castronova joins The Advisor to reframe eco-anxiety as a signal rather than a flaw. She walks through a practical path from fear to agency built on awareness, acceptance, and action. Along the way, she connects burnout and disconnection to planetary strain, showing why the climate c...

He spent fourteen years pretending he was fine. Dave Mowry lost his business, his stability, and nearly his family to bipolar disorder and severe anxiety before a stand-up comedy class turned everything around. Today he performs, teaches comedy to others living with mental illness, and writes the books people say tell their own story back to them. Dave and Stacey talk about what those lost years a...

You feel most like yourself everywhere except home, and that contrast is getting impossible to ignore. Leaving a toxic relationship rarely starts with one big moment. For Sammie DeMarco, it started when concerts, conventions, and friends reminded her what peace actually felt like, while the criticism and tension at home kept wearing her down. She breaks down the trauma bond that kept her stuck, ho...

The stricter the rules, the louder the cravings — and Dr. Theresa DeLorenzo has spent 25 years proving it. A registered dietitian, doctor of clinical nutrition, and yoga therapist, she unpacks why restriction backfires, how the binge cycle forms, and what your cravings are actually asking for. Drawing from her own experience with weight pressure in competitive gymnastics, she explains how athletes...

Medicare changed in 2026, and the pharmacy counter is where most people find out. Two thousand dollars before the medication is handed over, or a doctor who quietly left the network. None of that is your fault. The premium is the least useful number on the page, and the line items underneath it are where the money disappears. Sandi Crawford has spent nearly twenty years as a licensed agent guiding...

Hydrogen water benefits extend far beyond what most people are using them for — and most people are only using one of the six ways this technology works. If you have been following the science of Brown's Gas and wondering what to actually do with it, this episode is for you. George Wiseman, founder of Eagle Research and a 40-year researcher on Brown's Gas, walks through every protocol in plain lan...

Hearing loss does not just take away sound. It takes away conversation, confidence, and connection. Michael Leung, founder of The FLO Group, returns to share the real stories behind affordable assistive hearing technology. He talks about a 100-year-old man who heard clearly again, a 75-year-old woman who became more engaged and joyful, and the families who got their loved ones back. Michael explai...

Menopause symptoms aren't caused by failing ovaries — they start in a tiny brain region called the hypothalamus, and that's why most treatments only partially work. Deborah Maragopoulos, a board-certified Family Nurse Practitioner with 30 years in neuroendocrinology, explains why hot flashes, brain fog, and mood swings are brain events, how chronic stress accelerates the transition, and what it ta...

Most patients say yes to a prescription without ever hearing one statistic. Dr. Joe Jacko has spent 36 years in internal medicine and sports medicine, and he believes patients deserve the whole picture. He shows how relative risk can make a small benefit seem large, what the number needed to treat reveals about common drugs, and the questions that reveal whether a treatment actually fits your goal...

Learn how five minutes a week can reverse years of decline and protect your mobility, independence, and vitality. Kyle Zagrodzky, founder and CEO of OsteoStrong, reveals why your skeleton is an endocrine organ that influences brain function, hormones, and metabolic health. He explains the difference between bone density and bone strength, why standard testing tells only half the story, and why imp...

She was hiding at sea and calling it work. Colleen Clifford fished commercially for years, drinking to outrun something she had buried. Here she talks about binge drinking, breaks down the 95/5 denial cycle, and describes how shame convinced her she was unlovable. She shares the loss of her husband to alcohol-related suicide, the moment she finally asked for help, and the small acts of self-kindne...

Most people with OCD aren't afraid of germs; they're afraid of their own mind. Eliana Bonaguro, LMHC, treats OCD, panic, and agoraphobia, and she illustrates them. She separates OCD from perfectionism, explains the difference between physical and mental compulsions, and shows why reassurance, rumination, and avoidance feed the loop instead of closing it. She walks through exposure and response pre...

The fight you keep having isn't about the dishes or the money. It's your nervous system trying to protect you from feeling unsafe. Registered psychotherapist Arkadiy Volkov breaks down why couples fall into the pursue and withdraw cycle, why logic fails once your body senses threat, and how naming the pattern restores a sense of safety. Using attachment theory, neurobiology, and emotionally focuse...

Six months to live. That was the prognosis. It was not the ending. Tom LeNoble grew up in a shack, built a career that reached Fortune 500 boardrooms, and then faced a diagnosis that should have closed the book. Instead, he found gratitude, presence, and a way to keep living fully. In this conversation, Tom talks about resilience as the currency that matters most, his "healing wheel," releasing th...

What if the anxiety you have been managing for years was never yours to begin with? Tracy Liberatore, attorney turned hypnotherapist and spiritual healer, explores silent inheritance, the patterns quietly passed down through families that shape your nervous system long before you can name them. Tracy shares her own path toward healing and explains why lasting change happens below the surface, in t...

Always tired by the middle of the afternoon, no matter how early you went to bed or how much coffee you drank. That kind of exhaustion is not a willpower problem. Caffeine does not create energy at all. It blocks the signal telling your body it is tired, so the crash always returns. Tim James, founder of Chemical Free Body, rebuilt his health after years of digestive illness and shares what real,...

What if the hours you sleep through are the most intelligent hours of your day? Sleep expert Megan Mazzocco joins Stacey Chillemi to dismantle almost everything you were taught about rest. Author of Sleep System: 28 Days to a Better Sleep, Megan explains how sleep rewires the brain, flushes neurotoxins, and opens a receptive state where creativity and intuition live. She shares why middle-of-the-n...

Grief has a way of rewriting what matters. Erica Brinker rose into global brand leadership at companies including Honeywell, then lost her infant son Luca, changing her life trajectory entirely. In this conversation, she talks about carrying grief while still being the one who holds everything together, why she stopped chasing the next title, and how she left executive life to build her podcast At...