Well, Now

For years, psychiatrists have been researching new methods to help people with treatment-resistant mental illness. These include severe cases of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other debilitating diagnoses. One type of drug has seen some positive results in clinical trials: psychedelics like psilocybin, MDMA, ketamine, and LSD. In professional medical settings, they’re used as a pa...

Everyone knows the quality of the air we breathe directly affects our health.  As the summer rolls along and more people seek reprieve from the heat indoors, it’s important to be sure our indoor air is clean and toxin-free. One pollutant to keep an eye out for is mold. Mold inside a home could hurt your health both immediately and in the long term. So to help us better understand how to spot mold...

Ever since it showed up on the Body Mass Index, the label “obese” has been used to judge and often shame people with larger bodies. Medical providers, family and friends, even strangers make assumptions about fat people’s health solely based on their size. At the same time, excess quantities of fat can lead to poor health outcomes such as high blood pressure, heart disease, and diabetes. Over the...

Each week, we’ve explored wellness from different perspectives, but we haven’t talked about what it means to live a full life while grappling with the real possibility of death.  Most of us hope for a full, long life with “good” health. But a serious, possibly fatal diagnosis changes everything: Our relationships with work, loved ones, and even the way we see ourselves. On this week’s episode of W...

Everyone has a different birth experience.  Obstetricians and midwives are well-known members of the birth team. Along with the pregnant person, they are central to labor and delivery. Doulas are lesser known, but they can provide essential support for pregnant women and their loved ones.  On this week’s episode of Well, Now: What to expect when working with a doula with Latham Thomas , founder of...

Youth mental health has hit a crisis point.  Just last year, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy released an advisory connecting young people’s use of social media with adverse mental health outcomes.  But Murthy and other public health leaders are fighting back, including New York City Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan . He’s leading the charge against social media platforms like Meta, TikTok, Snapc...

For many Americans, wellness is about mitigating and navigating disease. They’re looking for reliable ways to live healthier, longer lives. But some are thinking even bigger than that and looking beyond what doctors view as the standard lifespan: 10, 20, 30, even 40 years beyond it. These people are often called “biohackers.” On this week’s episode of Well, Now we talk to someone who’s considered...

For many, pregnancy is a time of heightened and joyful anticipation. There are doctor’s appointments, tests, preparation…All with a focus on bringing home a healthy baby.  The other side of pregnancy–the complications–is not readily discussed.  On this week’s episode of Well, Now we discuss all of these potential roadblocks with economist Emily Oster . In her latest book The Unexpected: Navigating...

Who hasn’t received necessary medical care and got a shockingly high bill for it weeks later?  Even with insurance, many Americans will experience this at some point–including one of the most recognizable doctors in the country: the U.S. surgeon general.  Earlier this year, Dr. Jerome Adams – who served as surgeon general for the Trump Administration – received a bill of nearly $5,000 after being...

A vital component of wellness is taking care of our mental health. But mental wellness is more than just drinking water, doing yoga, and going for a walk. Author and podcaster Allison Raskin has lived most of her life with diagnosed mental illness.  By navigating her mental health journey over the years, she’s been able to find community and humor through her diagnoses, particularly by writing abo...

April is Autism Acceptance Month, and how we’ve come to understand autism has evolved over the past several decades.  For years, autism spectrum disorder (ASD) was thought of as something that needed to be cured. Through better data and years of activism, that misunderstanding is changing. On this week’s episode of Well, Now we discuss that evolution with Sara Luterman , caregiving reporter for Th...

As we approach the warmer months and start spending more time outside, healthy skin couldn’t be more important. So how can we best protect our body’s largest organ? Feel free to stock up on all the products for a 10-step routine if you want. But the reality is healthy skin requires just three products. The rest is kind of BS. This week on Well, Now we talk all things skin health with Dr. Adarsh Vi...

Spring is a time for fresh starts. For a lot of us, that means spring cleaning. But don’t worry, we’re not talking about the whole house.  This week, the Well, Now team is spring cleaning our medicine cabinets. What are some medicinal must-haves, and what things should we definitely toss? Joining us to help tidy up is Dr. Mauricio Gonzalez , a board-certified physician in internal, emergency and o...

Eating disorders are one of the most deadly psychiatric disorders. But for decades, much of the criteria to diagnose one applied only to cisgender girls and those assigned female at birth – like a loss of menstruation. This meant that many cisgender boys and those assigned male at birth fell through the cracks.  On this week’s episode of Well, Now: The rise in eating disorders among boys and men w...

While most of the world moves on from Covid-19, millions of Americans remain in limbo: Those living with Long Covid. Long Covid symptoms are vast and can impact all parts of the body: from gastrointestinal tract issues and fatigue to autoimmune inflammation and cognitive impairment.  On this week’s episode of Well, Now – Kavita and Maya talk with Dr. Wes Ely , an ICU physician based in Nashville,...

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization named Covid-19 a pandemic, and public health around the globe changed forever.  Countries shut down their borders, businesses closed and furloughed workers, and millions of students went to remote learning. Two years in, more than one million Americans lost their lives. This week on Well, Now we mark this grim anniversary by talking about what we ha...

It’s impossible to ignore the impact of climate change. Sea levels are rising, and natural disasters like hurricanes and wildfires are increasing in strength and number each year.  A major contributor to a warming planet is the way we’re processing our food. So on this week’s episode of Well, Now we discuss ways to eat a full, balanced diet while keeping the health of the planet in mind with regis...

The U.S. healthcare system can split the country into two Americas. Your zip code, education, class status and more all play a role in the outcome of your health as well as the kind of care you receive.  Fewer markers more clearly define these disparities than race.  On this week’s episode of Well, Now Maya and Kavita talk about racism in American healthcare with Dr. Uché Blackstock .  Her new boo...

Stress is all around us, but that doesn’t mean it needs to run our entire lives. According to Dr. Romie Mushtaq – a neurologist turned corporate wellness consultant – the main culprit behind our culture of stress is what she calls a “busy brain.” This week on Well, Now Dr. Kavita Patel and Maya Feller, RDN talk with Dr. Mushtaq about curing our busy brains and her latest book The Busy Brain Cure:...

On this week’s episode of Well, Now’s ditching the flowers and grand romantic gestures we often see on Valentine’s Day. There’s tons of research about how loving relationships contribute to wellness, as well as how lacking those relationships can play a part in adverse health outcomes. But what if our entire understanding of love is misguided?  Kavita and Maya talk with relationship expert Dr. Sar...

Super Bowl LVIII is this Sunday, amid decades of controversy surrounding football’s impact on traumatic brain injuries. But for many athletes, these long-term effects can be felt well before making it to the pros: on high school and college teams. On Well, Now this week: Maya and Kavita talk with physical therapist and concussion specialist John Doherty about the science surrounding youth contact...

It’s award season in Hollywood, and it’s got the Well, Now team thinking about wellness and the entertainment industry. Can a medical drama really teach us accurate health information? Or is it all just high-stakes surgeries with beautiful actors? Maya and Kavita talk this out with physician, showrunner and Harvard lecturer Neal Baer . He brought powerful, data-supported stories on HIV, emergency...

On this week’s episode of Well, Now, Maya and Kavita talk about practical ways to break up with diet culture with fitness instructor, speaker and educator Chrissy King .  She’s the author of The Body Liberation Project: How Understanding Racism and Diet Culture Helps Cultivate Joy and Build Collective Freedom. Chrissy also ties in how breaking up with diet culture is a piece of a larger conversati...

On this week’s episode of Well, Now we get to the heart of what “wellness” actually means. Depending on who you ask, you get a lot of different answers.  So Maya and Kavita sit down with veteran journalist Isabel Burton to define the term. Burton was the executive editor of renowned health-and-wellness magazines Shape and Self. If you liked this episode, check out: A Toast to Dry January Podcast p...

On the first episode of Well, Now – Slate’s new podcast on health and wellness – hosts Dr. Kavita Patel and Registered Dietitian Nutritionist Maya Feller tackle resolutions.  A popular one? Sobriety. Or at least Dry January. With more people becoming “sober curious” Kavita and Maya visit a sober speakeasy in Brooklyn, hosted by the zero-proof cocktail maker Curious Elixirs .  They sit down with th...