The Rever Rundown with Mimi Deal

Alzheimer's is something very close to my heart. I watched my grandmother become someone she wouldn't have wanted to be, and it was heartbreaking for our family. So this episode means a lot. Our guest, Rachel Daugherty, is the founder of Booty and Brains and the Brain Matters community, and she brings a rare gift: she takes the complex science of brain health and makes it genuinely underst...

Have you ever been technically doing nothing, sitting on the couch, at dinner with friends, lying in bed, while your brain runs through everything you can't forget? That's the mental load, and today's episode is all about it. The mental load of motherhood isn't the physical work of cooking, cleaning, and driving. It's the invisible layer underneath: the remembering, the anticip...

Today we're getting into something nobody wants to talk about and everybody should: poop. I promise it's one of the most useful conversations we'll have, because your bowel movements are one of the clearest windows into your health, telling you about your hydration, your nutrition, how well you're absorbing nutrients, and how your gut is functioning day to day. I start with the que...

Ashley Madsen is one of our favorite guests, and after our peptides episode sparked a flood of questions about sex, desire, and libido, we had to bring her back.  This one is refreshingly honest. We start by untangling three words that get used interchangeably but mean very different things: libido, desire, and arousal. Then we walk through the stages of a woman's life and how desire shifts th...

Some of the best connections happen by accident. I met Becca Medvin during a car meditation at a wellness event. I'd climbed into her car to escape the heat and left feeling calmer than I had in ages. So I asked her on the show. Becca is a meditation and yoga teacher rooted in the Himalayan tradition, with a decade of study at the Clairvoyant Center of Hawaii and a passion for breathwork, flower e...

A year ago, Dr. Sarah Avila did my eyelid surgery, and the questions haven't stopped since. So I finally brought her on to answer them. Dr. Sarah Avila is the board-certified oculoplastic surgeon who performed my own upper eyelid surgery, and after all the questions that experience generated, I knew I had to bring her on. An oculoplastic surgeon specializes entirely in the upper face and every...

Today's guest is someone near and dear to my heart: my brother, Dr. Norman Ruiz-Castaneda, whom I lovingly call Tito. After earning his doctorate of pharmacy from the University of Florida, he spent the last decade specializing in compounding pharmacy and personalized care, and in 2020 he and his wife Christy opened Uptown Chemist, North Naples' first USP 800-compliant compounding pharmacy...

We first met Geri Del Vento when we were hunting for a space to record this very podcast, and hers was so beautifully designed we couldn't stop talking about it. Geri is a Venezuelan-born, Miami-raised creative whose path wound through dance, church environments, and motherhood before landing in interior design, and she brings real warmth and intention to everything she touches. We get into so...

I slid into Dr. Alyssa Olenick's DMs because I love her content that much, and this conversation did not disappoint. Alyssa has a PhD in exercise physiology specializing in women's health and metabolism, plus postdoctoral training in menopause, and she has run eighteen ultramarathons, so she brings both the research and the lived experience. We start where so much confusion lives: the sea...

I've been a fangirl of Ashley Madsen's work for a while, so getting her on the show was a real treat. Ashley is a double board-certified physician associate, international speaker, and educator in functional medicine, longevity science, and performance optimization. We start with NAD and Ashley explains why the real story is far more nuanced than "we lose it with age, so replace it.&q...

I met Dr. Teresa Chamorro at our perimenopause premiere, and afterward everyone said the same thing: bring the psychologist back. So here she is. Teresa is a clinical psychologist specializing in sleep and women's reproductive mental health, supporting women through fertility, pregnancy, loss, the postpartum period, and menopause. We start with something that isn't talked about nearly enou...

My Operations and Brand Manager Alex is back, and this time we didn't stick to one topic. We talked about circadian rhythm and why morning people and night owls are both just wired differently, how we each build habits around our own energy instead of against it, and how to use tools like the Oura ring without letting them override what your body's already telling you. We got into stress,...

I've read all the habit books and stumbled my way toward what works, so sitting down with someone who studies behavior for a living was a gift.  Sarah Welsh is a board-certified behavior analyst, and this conversation reframed how I think about change entirely. Here's some of what we get into: Why willpower isn't the answer, and what actually is and how to start a habit when you hate t...

So many questions have been coming in lately about perimenopause, HRT, what to do, and when to do it from patients that I have yet to answer.  This episode is dedicated to answering every single one of them.  When should you consider starting hormone therapy, and how do you actually raise it with your provider? Often the first sign that brings a woman in is simply not feeling like herself: disrupt...

What does it really mean to lead with authenticity, and how do you build influence without losing yourself in the process In this episode of The Rever Rundown, I sit down with Kimeran Johnson, COO and partner at Nexus Point and one of the most thoughtful leaders I've had the privilege of working with.  We talk about what it means to lead with purpose rather than ego, and why building people up...

This episode is close to my heart in more ways than one.  Bestselling author, speaker, and the creator of the Soul-Led Living podcast Nikki Novo and I go back to childhood, so sitting down with her in Miami felt less like an interview and more like a long-overdue conversation between two women who took very different paths to the same place: helping people listen to themselves. We talk about what...

Most of us feel it: the slow, heavy drop in energy and focus that arrives in the early afternoon.  In this episode, I break down what is actually behind the post-lunch dip and why it lands for almost everyone around the same time of day. I explain the two systems that overlap in the early afternoon. The first is your circadian rhythm, the internal clock that has not yet reached its peak wake signa...

For more than twenty years, "hormones cause cancer" has shaped how women are counseled, and how often they're left to suffer through symptoms dismissed as inevitable. In this episode, we sit down with Nico Misleh, FNP, founder of HRT University and the virtual clinic Apollo Health Optimization, for a clear-eyed look at where that fear came from and what the science actually supports....

GHK-Cu, the copper peptide currently positioned across social media as a near-miraculous anti-aging compound, has actually been studied for more than four decades. In this episode, we take an honest look at GHK-Cu as an anti-aging cure-all. We cover what 40+ years of research actually shows, the difference between GHK and GHK-Cu, the human topical studies that support its use, the gaps in the data...

Some of my favorite conversations start in the DMs, and this one is no exception.  For this episode of The Rever Rundown, I sat down with Dr. Jason Pencek. He’s a chiropractor, nurse practitioner, and founder of Fountain Wellness in Chicago. He's one of the most generous voices I've come across in the peptide and functional medicine space, and the conversation that unfolded was one of the...

In this episode, we break down peptides. What they are, how they work in the body, and which categories are most relevant in modern medicine.  Peptides are everywhere; across social media, wellness clinics, and patient questions in nearly every functional and integrative medicine practice. They are also one of the most misunderstood categories in modern medicine. We cover GLP-1s, growth hormone-re...

In this episode of The Rever Rundown, I'm joined by my uncle and one of the most thoughtful pharmacists I know, Luis Delgado, owner of Village Pharmacy and Compounding in Miami. We have the kind of unfiltered conversation about pharmacy, personalized medicine, and hormone therapy that most patients have never been invited into. Luis walks us through what a compounding pharmacy actually is, how...

In this episode, we take on testosterone, the hormone that became a controlled substance in the 1990s after decades of misuse, and that remains one of the most misunderstood pieces of the hormonal picture for both women and men. We cover what testosterone actually is, where it is produced, and why women have higher absolute levels of testosterone across their lifetime than estrogen or any other ho...

In this episode, I sit down with my mentor Erika Barry, nurse practitioner, national trainer, and also known as Injector Bunny. Erika shares the work ethic that took her from Johns Hopkins and UCSF to building a cult-following brand in aesthetic medicine, and the philosophy of transparency, consistency, and collaboration that has guided her throughout her career. This episode is a thoughtful look...

We need to talk about vibration plates. In this episode, I’m breaking down everything you need to know about whole body vibration plates because they are all over my Instagram feed and I was so close to buying one. So before I dropped the money, I did what I always do, I went down the research rabbit hole so you don't have to. I walk you through what whole body vibration plates actually are and I...