Not Your Doctor Podcast

Is it cancer, or have we just spent too much time on WebMD? This week, Tara and Laurel tackle health anxiety, from listener questions about suspicious moles to the particular psychological thriller of becoming a parent and discovering 47 new fears. We also confess whether medical school made us more or less neurotic, investigate the wellness trends convincing healthy people they're dying, and ask whether a little reassurance from your doctor is ever worth an unnecessary test. Unfortunately, having a body comes with risks, and so does access to WiFi.Discussing: health anxiety, hypochondria, illness anxiety disorder, cancer anxiety, medical anxiety, fear of cancer, health anxiety after having a baby, postpartum anxiety, new parent anxiety, medical school anxiety, medical students, WebMD, Googling symptoms, symptom checking, melanoma anxiety, health anxiety vs real symptoms, annual physical anxiety, medical reassurance, unnecessary medical testing, wellness trends, health and wellness podcast, Not Your Doctor Podcast

This week, Tara is planning on opening up a racoon farm (for wellness purposes) and Laurel is helping lost runners get even more lost. Then the gals delve into the oddities of wellness retreats before turning the conversation to some questions about breast augmentation, division of labor in relationships, corporate despair, and the potential dangers(?) of the pneuomnic plague.In this episode: wellness retreats, yurts, outdoors, corporate wellness, relationships, dating, women’s health, pneumonic plague, wellness culture, evidence-based medicine.

Peptides are having a moment, and apparently everyone now has a guy. This week, the docs wade into Wolverine Stacks, bodega peptides, injectable beauty promises and the mysterious vials of BPC-157 arriving in people's mailboxes, asking which peptide claims have actual medicine behind them and which are running several clinical trials ahead of the evidence. We also investigate whether peptides can heal your tendons, improve your skin and make you immortal, or whether your peptide guy might have oversold this.

Find the other half of the episode on Patreon at patreon.com/notyourdoctorpod where Tara and Laurel delve into our most toxic traits and relationships. And this week, the docs are your personal poison control center and ask what it takes to get products recalled, from lead-painted toys and asbestos makeup to craft beads that accidentally metabolize into GHB. Then we abandon toxicology for toxicity of a more personal variety, unpacking bad relationships, questionable personality traits and the uncomfortable possibility that sometimes the contaminant is coming from inside the house.

This is the episode where we say we’re going to talk about everything gastrointestinal and then mainly talk about IBS. Along the way, we declare war on minimal-privacy bathrooms, we decipher FODMAPs, explain why IBS and IBD are very much not the same thing, and investigate the deeply suspicious case of a boyfriend who apparently doesn’t poop.

This week, the docs are finding god. Tara and Laurel tackle listener questions about SSRIs vs prayer, whether your delivery room needs a religious affiliation, and finding community at synagogue when you don’t actually believe in God. Plus, we dig into some of medicine’s complicated religious history and finally figure out what a hospital chaplain actually does.

This week, the docs tackle the people who know you best and therefore know exactly how to drive you up a wall: your family. We get into meddling mothers-in-law, getting caught in the crossfire of a parent’s divorce, a sister running birthday-party infection control like the CDC, and a mom who decides the pickleball league absolutely needs an update on her daughter’s IVF.

Are your genes actually calling the shots, or do we just really want someone to blame? This week, the docs tackle listener questions about designer babies, whether Ancestry.com can accidentally become a paternity test, how worried we should be about inherited genetic disorders, and whether your DNA can really tell you if you're destined to be anxious, athletic, or just annoying. Join our Patreon at https://patreon.com/NotYourDoctorPod