The Health Courage Collective

Some people seem naturally less reactive and more at peace, and that “adaptive capacity” or distress tolerance is influenced not just by mindset, but by biology that can change day to day. Using Sojourner Truth as an example of calm, dignified resilience under extreme hostility, the script argues that it becomes more effortless to act like your ideal self when your cells and brain are supported wi...

AI is changing how we work, shop, think, and make decisions. But do you want it to change the way you age? If you learn how to use it wisely, AI can become a kind of VIP health concierge, helping you think through women’s health and menopause questions, organize information, analyze health data, explore different perspectives, prepare for medical appointments, and make better decisions about your...

AI is changing how we work, shop, think, and make decisions. But do you want it to change the way you age? If you learn how to use it wisely, AI can become a kind of VIP health concierge, helping you think through women’s health and menopause questions, organize information, analyze health data, explore different perspectives, prepare for medical appointments, and make better decisions about your...

Should you test your sex hormones during perimenopause? What can a hormone test actually tell you, and which type of test is most useful? In this episode, we look at the different ways you can test your hormones, including blood, saliva, DUTCH urine testing, and at-home urine hormone tracking, and what each one can and cannot tell you. We’ll talk about the limitations of testing estradiol and prog...

In this episode, we’re talking about one of the biggest mistakes we can make with our health: treating the leaves instead of looking at the roots. Symptoms, abnormal lab results, and health problems are often treated as problems to be fixed, but what if they’re actually clues pointing to something more meaningful? Let’s remind ourselves why a root-cause approach to health can change the way we thi...

You deserve to know whether what you’re doing in the gym is a waste of your precious time and energy, or something that will actually gift you more time and energy in the future.  And how to best make it something you actually enjoy and that realistically fits within the constraints of your reality.   Let's make sure you know what a good exercise routine for a woman in her 40s or 50s is and where...

How to work with your perimenopausal hormones in a way that prevents or drastically delays the chronic diseases of aging shouldn’t be a hidden secret or controversial or confusing or seen as a matter of opinion or only available to people with the finances to self pay for services not covered by insurance.  But for now it is. So, what’s the deal?  Why don’t medical providers agree about the value...

One of the biggest drivers of the long, slow rot model of aging is the loss of muscle mass that accompanies aging.  There are forces at play that drive that age-related muscle loss.  But once you know about them, you can take countermeasures to overcome them and persist into old age with more autonomy and possibilities than people who don’t deliberately age with anabolic resistance in mind.   Not...

While you may know that on average women tend to live longer than men, do you know how many of those years are lived in good health compared to men?  There are plenty of challenges unique to being female, but did you know that there’s a magic time period where we can jump in and dramatically change how our future is going to play out?   come to my website: www.healthcouragecollective.com Are you r...

Sleepio web based app with virtual therapist Somryst CBTI app CBTi coach free app Insomnia coach free app Provider directory CBT-I: https://cbti.directory/  Book: Quiet Your Mind and Get To Sleep: https://www.abct.org/books/quiet-your-mind-and-get-to-sleep-solutions-to-insomnia-for-those-with-depression-anxiety-or-chronic-pain/ Your risk of all of the chronic diseases of aging, how healthily you a...

What things affect how well you age?  There are lots and lots of factors, but one of the funnest ways to boost your oxytocin, serotonin, dopamine, substance P, and overall healthspan is with kindness to yourself and others.  It improves your mood, reduces pain and cardiovascular risk and helps you live longer and stronger.  And the goodness is contagious. my website: www.heatlhcouragecollective.co...

If you want a healthy future into old age, you need a healthy liver.  Fortunately, it’s extremely robust and pretty low maintenance, considering how much crazy complicated stuff it does. But at least 1 in 4 Americans has liver dysfunction, which will slowly steal some of their agency of what they’re able to do as they get older.  I think it’s worth 20 minutes of your time to learn how to love and...

Provider directory CBT-I: https://cbti.directory/   Book: Quiet Your Mind and Get To Sleep:  https://www.abct.org/books/quiet-your-mind-and-get-to-sleep-solutions-to-insomnia-for-those-with-depression-anxiety-or-chronic-pain/ Sleepio web based app with virtual therapist Somryst CBTI app CBTi coach free app Insomnia coach free app Your risk of all of the chronic diseases of aging, how healthily you...

5 Midlife Screening Tests That Give You a well deserved Unfair Advantage Where to get a DEXA scan Where to get a Continuous Glucose Monitor   I’ve used Ageless Rx and had a good experience Where to get a VO2 max test Feeling overwhelmed by “all the guidelines”? In this episode, I narrow it down to five screening tests that are actually worth your time in midlife.  Especially if you want to feel st...

How Shakespeare Helps You Age Better: The Missing Half of IntelligenceIn this Health Courage Collective Podcast episode 264, host Christina Hackett argues that aging “abnormally well” requires more than logic, data, and risk stratification: it requires story-based “primal intelligence,” a set of human abilities AI cannot replicate. Drawing on Angus Fletcher’s book Primal Intelligence and examples...

Do you ever have bad days?  Do you think that if you were somehow different or better…you wouldn’t?  Nope.  Everyone has bad days sometimes, and there are 6 things you can do to extract all the value out of the gift of a bad day.  Instead of spiraling down, you can spiral up.  Your bad days won’t take you as low or last as long.  But you’ll still have them sometimes.  And that’s OK.  You’ll know e...

Cologuard at home test link: https://www.cologuard.com/insurance To learn more about preparing your brain for anesthesia, read the Amen Clinics Blog on Anesthesia and POCD or the Amen Clinics Blog on Surgery Risks . Are Colonoscopies Helping Us? How to Make Colon Cancer a Problem You Don’t Have to Have www.healthcouragecollective.com Are colonoscopies actually helping (women and society)?  Colorec...

What if your body were doing something automatically without any conscious control from you that contributed to fatigue, weight gain, sleeping problems, respiratory problems, mental health struggles, heart disease and poor athletic endurance?  Tons of people’s bodies are doing this and they have no idea.  They also have no idea that they can change it.  For free.  And if they do, they’ll age at a...

Since our body breathes without us having to think about it, it seems like it would do this automatic job correctly and optimally.  Unfortunately, since the industrial revolution, we have drifted away from our proper way of eating, moving, sleeping, AND breathing.  What?  There are simple, easy, and free things we can be doing to improve our body’s ability to more fully oxygenate all of our cells...

Do driven, high achieving people ever have days when they just don’t have any motivation?  I think yes.  I think they’d tell us they experience the same feelings and motivational deserts as the rest of us.  The only difference is in how they reflexively act when they have no motivation.  It’s easier to reactively act like your more ideal self when you have a pre-established protocol in place for d...

How do you feel about mammograms?  Have you had one?  More than one?  Or, are you feeling guilty or reckless for not getting one yet?  Conventional medical dogma is definitely to get regular mammograms.  Mammograms are our first line of defense against breast cancer.   You probably personally know someone who has encouraged you to get a mammogram because a mammogram discovered cancer in them or so...

What if you had the opportunity to invest in something with guaranteed returns?  You'd be crazy not to.  If you're in your 40s or 50s, now is the critical time to make the investments that will payoff huge in your 70s and 80s! Come to my website: www.heatlhcouragecollective.com Are you ready to give your cells their best chance to not have to stop living before they die by allowing them access to...

If you’re thinking about replacing your hormones as they decline with age, it’s important to really think through why you want to take hormones and how you want to take hormones.  So that you’re a thinking woman making intelligent decisions about her future rather than an object being acted upon.  Standard practice is that the only reason to take hormones is to take the edge off your most botherso...

Aging at an elite level requires acting strategically right now, while you’re in your 40s and 50s to give your future self an advantage.  Not just biologically, but also mentally.  The way you choose the things you want to work toward affects whether you’re going to be able to push the envelope in terms of what you’re capable of becoming in your 70s 80s and beyond. come to my website: www.healthco...

How confident are you in choosing the right dose and right form of melatonin to optimize your health in your 40s and 50s?  Our natural production of melatonin decreases with age and with declining sex hormone levels.  And it affects more than just your sleep.  So is it something you should be taking?  And how much should you take and how often should you take it?     www.healthcouragecollective.co...