What’s your relationship like with your body? It’s so easy to neglect our health when life gets so busy and we don’t know what’s going on inside.

Podcast of the week

1. The Dumbbells

Streaming platform: All streaming platforms

Genre: Health and Fitness

With a sparkle in their eye, a spring in their step and glitter in their voices, comedians and hosts Erin McGown and Ryan Stanger welcome filmmaker and musician Jess Lane to the “weight room”, to talk about her relationship with sports, getting your first push-ups and strength training before surgery.

Lane, who grew up in New Jersey, admits that she wasn’t a physically driven or motivated person in her childhood. But her mum encouraged her to start playing sports in seventh or eighth grade – running track to be precise – even though she had zero stamina and was only 5 feet tall.

They move on to speak about how our parents can also be contributing factors to how we interact with sports and food. Though Lane has never dealt with any eating disorders, almost 10 years ago she became vegetarian-vegan, even though she admits that veal heart is still one of her favourite meals.

The premise of The Dumbbells is to guide your life towards training dirty, eating clean and living in-between. Due to her ADHD and being extremely competitive, after Lane was taught how to swim in 2003 by a negative teacher, she stopped working out entirely. So this was a very interesting conversation.

2. Biohacking Bestie with Aggie Lal

Streaming platform: All streaming platforms

Genre: Health and Fitness

Biohacking changes the chemistry of your body and your physiology through science and self-experimentation to increase energy and vitality. Do you have any biohacking goals? Do you know how to biohack your body? These are the types of questions US-certified biohacker and nutritionist Aggie Lal talks about on the Biohacking Bestie podcast.

In the latest episode, she speaks to Wim Hof, also known as The Iceman, who is a Dutch motivational speaker and extreme athlete known for his ability to withstand low temperatures. He shares some of the methods he uses to engage with nature and the mantras he shares with people he trains with.

After this, ice baths become a topic of conversation, where Lal shares how it’s encouraged her to open up her heart more and see life for how fragile it truly is. Hof explains the other benefits ice baths can have for our mental and physical health.

“It forces you to be in the moment. There are no thoughts just being,” he says. He goes on to share how much it helps you be in control of your emotions, especially when you factor in deep breathing and how it helps to calm your body down.

3. Performance People

Streaming platform: All streaming platforms

Genre: Health and Fitness

“It’s never too late,” says Dr Gabrielle Lyon, a functional medicine practitioner and the founder of the Institute for Muscle-Centric Medicine, who is well-versed in brain and thyroid health, lean body mass support, and longevity. The message she drives home throughout her conversation on Performance People, is that she just “wants a stronger mental or physical world”.

Georgie and Ben Ainslie chat with people in high-performance partnerships from sports, entertainment, business and politics. They discuss everything about success and failure, highs and lows and how to overcome all sorts together. They believe that what these people know about performance is worth knowing (and sharing), and I agree.

So how can you improve your muscle health? Resistance exercise and dietary protein. But what is more impactful? Exercise or diet? “It’s exercise,” says Dr Lyon.

4. The Doctor’s Farmacy with Mark Hyman, M.D

Streaming platform: All streaming platforms

Genre: Health and Fitness

What’s the science behind quantum healing? Dr Mark Hyman, a practising family physician and someone who is focused on using food as medicine to support longevity, energy, mental clarity, happiness, and so much more, speaks to friend, Deepak Chopra, who is a clinical professor of family medicine and public health at the University of California, San Diego.

The conversation starts with Chopra explaining what a “quantum body” is and why, according to him, it’s not subject to ageing, disease and inflammation in comparison to our physical bodies.

It’s quite a complex episode that unpacked why we also have this “quantum body” that only exists on a sub-atomic level. Chopra also explains why it’s an infinite and invisible source of our everyday reality, which can interfere with our feelings, thoughts, physical sensations and biological responses throughout our lives. He believes that without our quantum body, there is no physical body.

I think my biggest takeaway was being reminded how much the way we choose to live our lives can have a direct effect on our physical bodies. Especially when we are constantly living in a cycle of busyness.

Spotlight on…

5. June: Voice of a Silent Twin

Streaming platform: BBC Sounds

Genre: True crime

In new BBC podcast, June: Voice of a Silent Twin, June Gibbons tells the tragic story of her and her sister Jennifer, who were the twins cut off from the world and refused to speak to anyone but each other. But after a brief crime spree, they became the youngest women in Broadmoor.

“We had a speech impediment. Our parents couldn’t understand a word that we were saying, nobody understood – so we stopped talking,” June said during the three-part podcast series.

“It was almost like an unfolding horror story of mystery and intrigue, ending in tragedy. We were trying all these things to try to get help. We didn’t know how it would end.”

Their story inspired The Silent Twins, a film which came out in 2022, starring Letitia Wright and Tamara Lawrance and the 1998 Manic Street Preachers hit song Tsunami. So I’m glad June can finally tell their story from their point of view.