is a London-based nutritional therapist and founder of Full Serving, a practice for whole-body health. On her newsletter, she takes a practical, fuss-free approach to all things health and wellness, considering the intricacies of people’s real lives rather than striving for total optimization (see: her case for breakfast soup and a sweet treat, or her guide to eating out).

Those interested in working with Kat 1:1 can schedule a consult here.

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What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Being healthy means feeling good most of the time, for a long time. Energized in the day, relaxed at night, and having enough strength, discomfort, joy, or sadness relative to what the experience calls for, rather than chasing an unrealistic state of constant perfection. When you’re healthy, you can do “imperfect” things and still feel good.

It relates to the idea of being adaptable, which to me is a key tenet of health. The opposite is rigidity — inflexibility with ideas, inability to deal with friction, body feeling all stiff. Not great.

If I can feel good in a packed morning train, stay resilient during challenging times, and feel great sunning on a beach…that to me is a good indicator of health. Healthy most of the time rather than hoping and waiting for the right conditions.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

Instinctive. A bit hodgepodge, in a good way. My lifestyle is really a mashup of being super present for short spurts, then allowing space for creative projects, spontaneous socializing, and whatever unexpected thing lands on my plate. I’ve learned to trust my choices without constantly questioning them when it comes to health — that alone has lightened the cognitive load considerably. I also live and die by my Google Calendar; everything that matters to me goes in there. I’m no longer a time optimist and it’s freed me. Get real, do what you say, stop overcomplicating it.

How do you start and end your days?

Open the curtains so daylight can stream in. Head to the kitchen to boil the kettle so I can rehydrate with hot water — I’ll go for about half a liter first thing. While that’s happening, I brush my teeth, light an incense cone, and send a “morning” emoji to my parents who are halfway across the world. Then I’ll eat a couple of bites of something before heading out for a walk with my boyfriend. I tend to leave my phone at home.

We take a loop of the park — I like seeing all the runners and checking on the herons that hang out by the lake. There are a lot of great dogs, which always lifts the spirits. We grab a coffee during the walk, sip it while we chat, and by the time we’re back it’s been 5,000ish steps and I usually feel nice and warm. Then either lift some weights or get in the shower before enjoying a big breakfast. Having time in the morning to do something nourishing — for free — is a real blessing. I don’t take it for granted.

I’m interested in health that integrates into real life, not a fantasy version of wellness.

That’s what I’ll do most days in London. I’m currently writing this from LA, and I do basically the same thing: curtains, hydrate, emoji, walk, chat, sweat, breakfast. The routine is so simple I can do it anywhere.

If time allows, I also end my days with a walk after dinner. Otherwise, I crack on with my wind-down routine. Most days, I jot down a quick recap of what happened in my diary. There’s no pressure to write something poetic; usually, it’s just a series of “I did this, then saw this, tried this, and ate this…”

Then I’m off to wash my face. I’m big into face massage. Never go a day without it. All I need are my fingers and knuckles. I love a tool or a gadget, but I like that if the airline lost my suitcase, I’d still be able to do the things I need to keep a routine. I’ll wash my face with an oil balm, really getting under the cheekbones, jawline, around the eyebrows, and then follow up with a gentle face wash to rinse off any remaining residue. Brush my teeth. Face cream, eye cream. Then get into bed to read for between 15-30 minutes. Lights out.

Can you recall a moment when you became more aware of your health, or your relationship to it changed?

I can think of a few. I’ll start with when I realized I had a crustacean allergy as a kid — I think I was maybe five? — after sitting down and eating what felt like fifty shrimp in a row. It was at a big family get-together in Hong Kong. I remember everyone peeling shrimp and tossing the shells onto newspaper laid out on the table. I reacted pretty quickly: lips went dark, I got super itchy, and my throat started closing up. It taught me early that food can be extremely powerful. It also taught me the importance of advocating for myself. It’s not up to other people to keep me safe from shrimp!

Even knowing this from a young age, it took years of treating my body poorly — lots of partying, restrictive eating, “sleep when you’re dead” type of thinking — for me to return to ways of being healthy that work for me. I had a phase when living in New York in my twenties that led to burnout: full-body hives, blinding migraines, painful periods. I was extremely cranky, which is interesting to think about now because, in general, I’m a pretty upbeat person. This wasn’t so much a moment as a multi-year phase, but it definitely changed my relationship with my health — and also how I thought of myself.

I think all of this shapes how I work as a practitioner now. I’m interested in health that integrates into real life, not a fantasy version of wellness. I understand what it feels like to be ambitious, overstimulated, social, creative, exhausted, and still wanting to feel good.

What’s your relationship to self-healing?

Committed and pragmatic. It’s something I value and prioritize. I also know what I’m capable of and, where needed, I seek expert help. I know my limits.

Do you work with any practitioners, texts, or modalities on a regular basis?

I do a lot of self-study. Professionally, I stay engaged with nutrition research. It’s important to know what’s happening and to stay engaged with the topics my clients are going to bring in, plus it’s required for my certification and insurance as a registered nutritional therapist.

Personally, I’m devoted to reading in general — print whenever possible. I love having a paperback or a fave magazine. I go to the theater. I go to the movies. I listen to the radio. I count these as modalities I rely on for health.

I’ve had periods of acupuncture, therapy, and bodywork at different points in my life depending on what I needed. I think it’s all brilliant. There isn’t a huge functional massage culture in London, which I do miss from living in Hong Kong and NY. Give me a row of massage beds separated by a curtain and I’m happy as a clam.

And I see a personal trainer. He’s got me doing a mix of boxing, calisthenics, and weight lifting. We do it in the park and it’s really fun.

When do you feel the most nourished?

After jumping into a body of water under baking sun. If that’s not available, a good laugh with someone I love will do the trick.

How do you reset?

Take a walk, drink lots of water, move my body, get in the sauna, have a shower, cook meals, have a poo, go to sleep. I find that if I go too many days without reading a book, I can feel “off,” so I try to avoid that.

I’m not a fan of big overhauls and try to do things consistently so I don’t need to fully reset.

Do you have a favorite meal?

Hong Kong-style fish ball noodle soup. Fresh fish balls with flat rice noodles in a chicken stock, blanched choy sum and lots of chopped spring onion on top. Fried fish skin on the side (if you’re unfamiliar, it’s like a crackling) to dip into the soup. I’m salivating typing this.

In terms of what I’m drawn to: simple, whole foods. I love naturally vibrant, colorful foods. I usually make meals that don’t require a lot of ingredients and assemble easily. I leave the elaborate cooking to the pros. Love a good chew. And fruits that start with the letter P.

What advice would you give your younger self?

Just start. Time will pass whether you do it or not. And if you don’t like it, you can always change your mind.

To the person reading this?

It’s never too late. I’m cheering you on.

What would you like to see or create more of in the world?

Kindness, optimism, originality, fun, generosity.

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Lauren Rothery is an American writer and filmmaker. Her debut novel, Television, was published by Ecco last year. You can read her short fiction in The Baffler and elsewhere.

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What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

I think lately that a healthy person is like a healthy old tree, invisibly altering the local air. You breathe easier next to them.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

Chaotic just now. I ended a long relationship recently, and moved back to New York. I’m subletting while I look for some place I’d like to stay longer. I spent the better part of six years in Europe, being in love, writing, riding on the back of a motorcycle, climbing up mountains, moving around a lot. I wrote and published my first novel. It was wonderful. But I’m tired and I’d like to sit down.

How do you start and end your days?

I wake up early, sometimes before sunrise, and start the drip coffee. I try not to look at my computer or turn on the lights. I just bump into things a while if the sun’s not up. When I’ve got the coffee made with whole milk and honey, I go sit in the front window at my bedside and think. It probably looks meditative but it’s the opposite. I’m not trying to be present in my body, but to let my thoughts roll. There’s a tug of resistance sometimes, the impulse to do something. I ask myself, What’re you, in the FBI? What’ve you got to do at dawn? and go back to aimlessly thinking. After a while, I’m comfortable. Then, very comfortable.

I do hot yoga every morning. I like to go alone. I like to listen to Beck on the walk. I like to sweat and chat with the same people at the same time every day. I’m a highly fidelitous person. I rarely get bored of what I like.1 In terms of cumulative physical results, hot yoga yields a nice mix of softness and strength, and it feels like giving my insides a shower. After class, I shower my outsides and have some fruit or a PB&J. Water. Orange juice. Desiccated bovine organ vitamins. Arnica tablets, if anything feels sore. Then I write for as long as I can. Sometimes at the park with my notebook, sometimes at home with my computer. If there is a friend to see, I like to see them in the afternoon.

I take a walk around the neighborhood in the evening, then watch an old movie. I love The Apartment. Last week I watched it twice. I’ll watch anything that Billy Wilder was even remotely involved in. If Billy Wilder lit somebody’s cigarette on set, I’ll watch the movie. I think if you’re having a tough time in your life, it’s good to be made to laugh and cry by someone dead. Gives you a sense of proportion.

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One of the most interesting parts of running a questionnaire-based newsletter is watching the themes and archetypes that naturally emerge. If I asked you to describe the Health Gossip Girl, you could probably come up with a list: flower essences, dry brushing, nightly herbal infusions, daily grounding… (Or, as put it a few months ago: the “friend who’s constantly referring to her osteopath.”) You know the type, probably because you are the type.

Lately, another characteristic has emerged, what friend-of-the-letter Carlisle has called the lymph nymph. The lymph nymph remains deeply attuned to the state of her lymphatic system on a daily, if not hourly basis, frequently engaging in self-massage, tapping, brushing, and jumping. Some people question the lymph nymph, uncertain if her lymphatic system actually needs to be manually pumped (it does), and yet, she persists — snatched, based, and glowing.

Today’s guest, , both fits this mould and departs from it. Ash is a true Renaissance woman, a master herbalist and folk doctor who, in a previous life, was a renowned fine-art photographer. On her X account, she posts some of the most truly esoteric (as in, not often spoken about) takes on light, breath, beauty, and, yes, the lymphatic system.

Below, she opens up about the late-stage Lyme diagnosis that forced her to step away from her photography career, the long unraveling and rebuilding that followed, and her slow life on the prairie today (“where every lake meets the sky”). Enjoy.

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What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Living within the rules and laws of proper right relationship, where our body, minds, and spirits are integrated within the greater sacred hoop of nature. Vital in a way that aligns with greater goods and our life purpose.

Health, for me, deeply equates to a physical and emotional vitality and resilience that is embodied and lived on those levels, with a healthy nervous system and adaptable capacity. A body that is nourished enough to be harmonious in its purpose and in what we need from it.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

I am a total loner at present. I live and breathe herbalism, Eastern medicine, and creativity from a house tucked into a hill that I lovingly call OMOTH (“Old Man on the Hill,” so named for the lovely old weeping Spruce along a sandy creek out back).

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Jess Jobst (@jess__jobst) is a designer, producer, and motorcyclist. She writes the Substack, .

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Being healthy, to me, is a symbiosis of the mind, body, and spirit. It's as much to do with my mental wellbeing, emotional sobriety, and my environment as it is with my actual body. It's about being alive and awakened, living in sync with nature and the universe.

When I can, I stay away from any regimented routines and let my body sleep when it is tired, intuitively eat, etc. I have become so much more aware of how my body functions by paying attention to it acutely. I try and live in sync with the natural rhythms of the seasons and my menstrual cycle, etc.

I'm one of those people who need their space to be clean, enticing, comfortable, quiet, calm, and decorated well. I cannot do anything in a messy room — this affects my mind and my ability to function. I need to curate a beautiful space with art, handmade objects, books, and well-designed furniture to surround me, and a lot of light to feel good and inspired. It needs to be a peaceful environment. I am usually listening to some sort of new age, environmental, meditation music in the background, and there are fresh flowers on my table. My nervous system craves being grounded, so that is very much to do with setting the stage for that.

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A little-known Lily fact is that I used to be somewhat Soundcloud famous. It was a formative period of time, one that led to some of my closest friendships and a years-long flirtation with living in Europe. After starting this newsletter, interviewing my ultimate music idol, and simply outgrowing a good amount of angst, the arc felt complete. It was time to move on.

In this week’s newsletter, we’re hearing from , a Los Angeles-based music journalist and host of Bandsplain, a music podcast exploring cult bands and artists. Yasi is, it turns out, a major Health Gossip fan, and also runs a fabulous Substack of her own, where she’s sampled the music tastes of guests like Alexis Page and Petra Cortright.

Her approach to health mirrors much of this newsletter’s ethos, prioritizing simplicity over optimization. “I’m most interested in leaving room for delight,” she writes. In spending time with loved ones, “even if they insist on keeping their living room lit like the hostage-breaking room at Guantanamo.”

Read on to hear more about her daily routines and journey from leading a party girl lifestyle to weightlifting, raw milk, and going to bed by 10pm.

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What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

My ideas of health have changed a lot over time, but right now, I would say health means cultivating balance, authenticity, and alignment with your highest Self. More granularly, the aspect of health I’m trying to work on now is regulating my nervous system.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

My current lifestyle is pretty chaotic, but in a natural way. I’ve tried to fight that a lot in the past, but the truth is it’s just how I function best. I’m never going to be the person with the completely organized office/car/closet or a neat and exacting schedule and that is fine.

Some days I work nine hours straight, and some days I work in short, intense bursts, and some days I can’t work at all. I have to be a bit vigilant about honoring those days, because I tend towards workaholism. I try to move every day, be outside some part of every day, and eat often and well. It's important for me to connect with my friends and family every day, even if it's just texting or FaceTiming. I’m most interested in leaving room for delight, rather than planning or optimizing. Less rigid scheduling, more magic.

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is the creator of Health Gossip, which she launched in early 2023. The name appeared to her in a dream.

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Our capacity to receive and participate in the world around us. To meet life fully; to appreciate and cultivate beauty. To give from an overflowing cup.

When I feel most healthy, I feel most clear, like I have the energy to fully shine my light and give that light to others. When I feel least healthy, it’s when I’m only thinking about myself.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

Urban-ascetic-contrarian.

How do you start and end your days?

I start most mornings outside, staring into the distance while sipping from a cup of warm broth or herbal infusion (lately: nettle, hibiscus, and dandelion root).

Over the past few years, this has been my most consistent, and most necessary, routine — originally born out of a desire to normalize my circadian rhythm, only to realize it had a ripple effect on my overall mood, energy levels, and sense of peace.

I firmly believe that the way we start our days determines the spirit of that day. It’s important to connect to ourselves and be conscious of what we’re consuming in that vulnerable, post-waking state.

Before I leave the apartment, I’ll do a few things: tongue scrape, take a flower essence (if I’m working with one), and drink mineral water with any empty-stomach supplements.1 Lately, I’ve also been doing a lymphatic + dry brushing routine, which I’ve written about elsewhere.

When I return home, I focus on nourishment: breakfast, which normally looks like some combination of a raw carrot salad, eggs with raw sheep or goat’s milk cheese, and sauerkraut. Now that it’s warmer out, I’ve been enjoying a smoothie with wild blueberries, coconut milk, Ceylon cinnamon, and bone broth protein. I drink matcha or coffee most days, usually at a cafe.

I really value movement and seek to always be out and about, ideally only home in the early morning and late at night. I don’t want to live in a city forever, but am grateful for the flaneur lifestyle that it permits.

After breakfast, I leave the house to start my workday (outside of Health Gossip, I work in marketing for a health and wellness startup). If time allows, I’ll either go to the gym before work or during my lunch break, where I do a mix of calisthenics, weightlifting, and pilates depending on the day.

I walk for at least an hour every day, ideally listening to nothing, breaking my “music fast” at the gym with trashy Belgian house music and religious chants.

By evening, I’m usually quite exhausted, and like to keep things simple: Cook a nice meal, keep the lighting dim, read, write, clean, take a bath... Lately, I’ve been allowing myself to go to bed as soon as I feel like it, sometimes as early as 8 or 9pm.

Can you recall a moment when you became more aware of your health, or your relationship to it changed?

Of course. Many moments. I think I may be going through a moment right now.

The first was a series of accidents in early childhood, which feel a bit minor now but definitely had an impact on my overall outlook on health and expression. At the age of five or six, I was in a park showing off to a friend “how far I could jump” off the curb, then jumped straight into a tree trunk. I got stitches. Around that same time, I was “ice skating” in socks on the hardwood floors of my father’s house and face-planted. It didn’t particularly hurt, but my face was bruised for a week or so after (which, to a young girl, almost felt worse than a broken bone). I put sparkles on my nose in an attempt to make the bruises more palatable to my kindergarten audience.

In both of these experiences, I think I realized — literally faced — the fact that my actions had consequences, and, to a lesser degree, that my self-expression had to be tempered or controlled in order to stay “safe.”

(This shyness would carry me into college, where, I later learned, a friend of a friend thought I was a Russian exchange student.)

In the moment I’m in now, of once again becoming conscious of my “health,” a similar theme is resurfacing (maybe because I’m living in the same city where I grew up). I’m noticing the rigidity that has become my default over the past few years, despite leading a fairly spontaneous, bohemian, connected life. I’m reminded of a sculpture an old friend once titled after me: “Lily, All Buttoned Up.”

In my heart of hearts, I don’t relate to this rigidity. Inside, I feel like a wild, freedom-oriented woman, one who lives in the country with her family and a black convertible Jeep Wrangler Sport. And yet, I still find myself defaulting to the monochrome urban costume; to blow-drying my hair. Perhaps these are the last gasps of a Falsified self.

I think it’s the work of a lifetime to be fully expressed — and even then, there’s always a gap between who we are and how we’re interpreted. With time, I’ve learned to not be so focused on narrowing it.

And what a blessing it is to have that interiority; to have something, some place, that’s just for us and God.

(There have been other moments, like a corneal ulcer that left me healing in the darkness of my childhood bedroom for a month, that I have spoken on elsewhere.)

Do you have a spiritual practice?

After a period of early-20s agnosticism and flirting with pop spirituality (more on that below), I am reengaging with Christianity, specifically Eastern Orthodoxy.

This has been a process, and one I’m still very much in the midst of. As someone who is naturally quite curious and mutable, I’ve noticed a resistance to committing to an organized religion, and also a lingering attachment to systems and practices that run counter to it. But I think whenever we feel resistance or fear towards something, that’s a sign that we must pursue it. Alas, there is no Perfect Christian.

My journey through and out of New Age spirituality has been winding. After a series of awakenings in the years following 2020, I felt a veil being lifted and wanted to explore everything on the other side. What began with Rudolf Steiner and the Christian mystics evolved into a deeper engagement with astrology, Human Design, manifestation, and eventually Kabbalah. I had all of my podcasts queued, and I was hooked.

But, like many, my relationship to these systems and modalities was ultimately that of a dilettante. I never fully committed to any one path, preferring to create my own spiritual system rather than anchor into a singular Truth. This left me confused, circling myself, with endless rabbit holes to dive into and no clear place to land. It also fed a kind of narcissism, where I was more focused on “fixing” myself and reaching a higher state of consciousness than being present with the world around me.

With time, I’ve found that the latter is actually a far more spiritual, and far more difficult, pursuit.

When I attended Divine Liturgy for the first time, something clicked into place. I finally felt held, like for once it wasn’t all up to me. I remember walking in, met with the haze of burning frankincense and timber of Byzantine chants, and understanding, on a visceral level, what “God-fearing” really meant. The acknowledgment of a higher authority, of divine law; of the reality that there are things objectively “right” and “wrong,” and that our actions have consequences — these are all truths that our modern, pleasure-oriented society loves to dismiss. Returning to them has given me a sense of peace that affirmations and chart-reading never quite did.

There’s a quote that I recently rediscovered from one of Manly P. Hall’s lectures, where he says that we can change human laws, but divine laws are meant to change us. Religion reminds us of the moral universe.

What’s your relationship to self-healing?

As someone who doesn’t often trust the popular narrative, I’m a self-experimenter by nature. In the past few years, I’ve reoriented much of my approach to health to be less informed by external advice or “experts” and more centered on my own inner knowing — with the understanding that it will guide me to the right modalities and people, should I need assistance.

(That’s an amazing prayer, if you’re struggling with some sort of perplexing ailment: God, bring the people and modalities into my life that will help me heal.)

People sometimes interpret the self-healing question quite literally: Do you believe that you, alone, can heal yourself? But, by virtue of being alive, we’re always in relationship — to our environment, to the people around us, to ourselves. In my view, when we aren’t in right relationship with those things, that’s when symptoms and imbalances arise.

I’ve said this before, but I think in order to be “healthy” in our current conditions, we have to live a bit alternatively. This is, in part, why I’m drawn to the guests that I am, and why the newsletter doesn’t feel so literal in its approach to health and wellness. I’m far more interested in hearing about someone’s goat milk water-flossing routine or pregnancy dreams than the 30 supplements they take every morning.

When we see people going deep in the biohacking direction, I think it’s because, deep down, they know they’re living in a way that is quite unnatural and feel the need to balance it out.2 But the way that we “balance it out” matters, especially when we consider how many things are marketed to us that we can simply create for ourselves, through living, or simply find in nature.

Sometimes, I really feel like the people who don’t think about their health much are the healthiest.

Do you work with any practitioners, texts, or modalities on a regular basis?

I haven’t been to the doctor in over a year, and don’t really feel the need to now (beyond getting bloodwork done). Diagnosis is a kind of spell-casting, and the practitioners that we choose to surround ourselves with matter greatly in our healing journeys. Everything affects everything.

The most life-changing doctors that I’ve worked with have functioned more like teachers (the true meaning of “doctor”). I feel like I’ve spent the past few years integrating what they have taught me.

When do you feel the most nourished?

Rolling around in the grass in the sun, temperature 65-82 degrees. Laughing with friends at a beautiful dinner, ideally one cooked by us. Acknowledging my needs, and allowing them to be met, without retreating into the (perceived) safety of solitude. Experiencing the abundance of nature and thinking, What more could I possibly need?

How do you reset?

These days, sleep and slowing down are often the best ways for me to reset, particularly if I’m feeling depleted or drained. Following my move out of NYC last year, I’ve felt myself entering an entirely new chapter. The transition out of the old and into the new has been a bit destabilizing, requiring a level of slowness and patience that doesn’t always come naturally to me. I’m learning how to tend to and be present with the beauty around me, rather than living out of pure utility. I’m learning to be a woman, rather than a girl or a machine.

On days when I’m not working, I’m a big fan of having my phone on airplane mode and doing something super simple, like taking a leisurely walk or reading in the park. I’ve been revisiting fiction, most recently by Natalia Ginzburg and Louise Glück.

I think it’s our right as women to rest as often as we please.

But, in other moments, it’s action that we need. When I’m feeling stagnant, I love to shake, dance, run, sweat. Talk to strangers, or God, or myself, out loud. Get out of my head. Deep clean my apartment. Do the things I’ve been avoiding.

These actions can be restoring or depleting, depending on where our systems are at. I often return to the phrase, “The opposite is the medicine.” If what you’re doing isn’t working, go another way.

Do you have a favorite meal?

In recent years, I’ve found that repetition works well for me (this is the case for meals as well as routines). My digestion functions best when it knows what to expect, especially if that food is local and in season.

Currently in rotation: baked chicken thighs, steak tartare, homemade bone broth, baked Japanese sweet potatoes, ground beef and rice... I agree with when she says that gym bros are enlightened beings. An underrated health “hack” is reducing the number of decisions we make per day — and keeping meals simple, predictable, and meal-prepped is a great way to do that.

What advice would you give to your younger self?

Honor your vision and don’t sacrifice your truth for a temporary high. The right ones will come if you let them.

What advice would you give to the person reading this?

Have the courage to go your own way.

What would you like to see or create more of in the world?

Physical skills. Cloudbusting and weather modification awareness. Gyms with natural lighting, 432 Hz music, and structured / spring water on tap. Tan lines. Healed male-female dynamics. PDA. Discernment.

The throughline of all of these is less energy spent on reacting and more energy spent on creating. The latter will lead to the desired outcome of the former, anyway.

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Related reading:

Brigid Blue Wallace (@brigid.blue) is a farmer living in New Jersey. I didn’t know much about her before inviting her on, and truthfully didn’t need to. Longtime readers of the newsletter will know that “good-on-paper” credentials often make for a boring interview. The less obvious the guest, the better.

You can find more of Brigid on TikTok and her baking Instagram.

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Being healthy is like winning the golden ticket of life. Sometimes you don’t win the golden ticket, and sometimes you do, and you try to keep it in mint condition, but over time it bends and folds and wears down. Sometimes you accidentally leave it in your pants pocket and put it through the washing machine, and find it all crumbled up in faded pieces. Health is the will to live. It transcends the flesh. It’s the spirit in the flesh.

Animals can smell health; it’s the first thing they do when they meet each other. We do it too. It’s a sixth sense that women, in particular, have. I can smell a rat from a mile away like a prize bitch hound, and I feel most healthy when those senses are sharp. When I want to know if one of my animals is sick, I see how the rest of the pack is responding to them. Every living creature has its own special value and contribution to the collective consciousness of the group.

For me, most of my desire to be healthy is due to my fear of death. I suppose my healthiest day will be the day I make peace with the fact that I’m going to die. I’m a body for God to experience life on earth through, and right now I don’t want it to ever end.

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Matt Blackburn (@mattblackburn) is the founder of Mitolife, a wellness brand rooted in mitochondrial health and his CLF Protocol — a framework that looks at aging through the lens of cellular stress and energy.

I first came across Matt’s work years ago, and have since come to admire his willingness to (publicly) change his mind — a quality that feels increasingly rare in the health space today.

On his podcast, Mitolife Radio, he’s tracked many of these changes, revisiting earlier positions while exploring topics like iron overload, high-dose melatonin, and the neuroprotective benefits of tobacco. His approach aligns closely with the Health Gossip ethos, viewing health not as a variable to optimize, but as the practice of tending to your life as a whole and iterating as needed.

You can find more of Matt’s work on Instagram and his website.

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What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Being healthy means using resilience instead of avoidance. You can be in an electric vehicle without getting a headache, and can go into big cities without feeling sick immediately from all of the electromagnetic radiation. Supplementing the right vitamins and minerals in the right amounts and forms — on top of a balanced diet, including animals and plants — creates this resilient state.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

My current lifestyle includes a healthy blend of technology use and nature immersion. Being 100% off-grid creates a unique challenge when juggling two or more wood stoves in the winter and operating heavy machinery to clear snow or downed trees. Living by myself in a cabin in the woods has given me rugged resilience and a sort of initiation into manhood that I didn't receive in my younger years.

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is an herbalist and the author of Naturally (2025), a beginner-friendly guide to herbalism and beyond.

I’ve found Rachelle’s approach to living — and, by extension, health — to be truly refreshing, an example of how, today, living “alternatively” doesn’t necessarily mean living in rebellion, but living in truth. As she wrote in a recent post, “When we’re brave enough to act according to our convictions, I believe, we end up resembling our truest selves.” She continues:

“What I want to see more of in the world…is an example of how to live differently. How to leave a life, for more life; how to leave a marriage, when nothing exactly is wrong. How to change radically and honestly, despite every pressure not to do so.”

You can find more of Rachelle on Substack and Instagram.

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What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

I have come to know the deepest state of health as one that requires, and results from, our living the lives we are meant to live. Meaning that no amount of biohacking can compete with existential misalignment.

To me, health is a state of aliveness — body, mind, and spirit.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

Beachside-jungle, pleasure-seeking, surf-addicted flowing — which could not be more different from the lifestyle I maintained until about two years ago.

I’ve been studying health my whole life, which means I know how to push my body (and brain) to the limit. I did that, working essentially nonstop from the time I was barely an adult. Through my move to New York (no money, no friends, no job, etc.), and many wild years in the fashion industry, through building my own businesses (herbal product lines, herbal cafe-apothecary, a private practice, classes and workshops, endless amounts of content…), and writing my book (Naturally). Then, suddenly, I stopped.

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Today’s guest is the one and only , the writer, actress, and director perhaps best known for HBO’s Girls (2012-2017). Critics-a-many have called her “the voice of her generation”; more recently, friend of the letter, Courtney, dubbed her the “patron saint of Substack.” Her second memoir, Famesick, is out now.

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What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Growing up in the height of the diet-obsessed 90s and early 2000s — Snackwells cookie commercials on TV, my mother and her friends all drinking a confounding daily powder called Ultraclear, which tasted like a vanilla-infused crayon, speedwalking for their lives — I didn’t realize it, but I thought that being healthy meant being thin. I started eating Lean Cuisine with my grandmother when I was eight, and I wanted to have twig-like arms swimming in my thermal, delicate ankles sticking out of my Pumas. Soon, jeans got tighter and tank tops got smaller and puberty came and my body started to change, which coincided with a spike in profound, fight-or-flight anxiety and painful periods (which, I was told, were just a fact of female life, like deciding whether or not to get an underage belly button ring from the place that also made fake IDs, or having a man expose himself to you on the subway).

Looking back, I can put together the emergence of my chronic health conditions like a detective going into a fugue state of newspaper clippings and red string. But at the time, it felt like everyone else was moving around in a body that made sense, could do its job, and mine was always glitching.

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John Doe (@pain___house) is a poet from Michigan and the author of Autumn in the Pain House (2024). He lives on the West Coast.

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

I’ve been blessed with consistently good physical health throughout my life. To me, health has always referred to mental health and sobriety. I’m often very ill mentally, I have been addicted to almost everything. I’m healthy when I’m living a life in line with an Alcoholics Anonymous program and the DBT principles set forth by Marsha Linehan.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

I recently relocated to the West Coast from Michigan. Besides one very troubled year in New York when I was 19, this is my first time leaving my home state. I feel very inspired here. The landscape is dramatic and my lifestyle includes a lot of driving. This is by design, I detest public transportation. Spending time alone in cars is, in my opinion, the closest we get to whatever happens before birth or after death.

Moving here has been one of many changes I’ve made since releasing my first book of poetry in Fall 2024. Another change has been semi-departing from Twitter. For people who are familiar with my writing or Twitter, this is a big change! I posted non-stop every day for almost two years while living an underemployed, celibate, cortisol-fueled life.

Now I have a wagey job that aligns with some of my interests. My drive to work includes a long bridge soaring over a portion of the Pacific Ocean. I have a girlfriend. I don’t know if I can live this ‘dopamine detox health chungus’ lifestyle forever, I would probably get bored, but I’m really enjoying how things are right now.

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is an indie product developer and beauty brand strategist. Obsessive Into the Gloss readers — which I assume many of you were — may remember her from her days at Glossier, which she helped launch alongside Emily Weiss. You can read more about her health and beauty escapades on Self Involved.

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Health is the feeling of freedom and ease in mind, body, and spirit.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

The past year has been a bit weird because my mom got diagnosed with glioblastoma last June and I moved back home to Buffalo temporarily. I’m still in the in-between space of my “real life” in NY and then posting up in my childhood bedroom. It’s been a really expansive experience and an unsolicited test of my own resiliency. My world quite literally got turned upside down.

Because I had already been very dialed in on my own health when this happened, I doubled down in Buffalo as a way to stay sane. I do best with routine, so really the only thing that shifts when I’m not sleeping in my own bed is my diet. I’m a much better eater in New York than I am in Buffalo, the junk food capital of the world. Otherwise, I stick with my morning supplement/injectables routine, found an amazing Pilates studio in Buffalo that’s randomly owned by my childhood ballet teacher (a sign from the universe), maintain my twice daily meditation schedule, keep in close touch with my group chats, and ultimately it has been really nice to be with my family.

I stopped drinking last May because I was testing out some new protocols and wanted to eliminate any variables. It was meant to be temporary, but I just never picked it back up. It’s been kind of a blessing in disguise. I didn’t necessarily drink a ton before, but I noticed that as I got older, I wouldn’t have a physical hangover the next day but an emotional one — morbidly depressed, totally anxious about every little thing. If I had been drinking last summer under all that stress, I would’ve totally lost it.

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is the author of ten books, including Leave Society (2021) and Trip: Psychedelics, Alienation, and Change (2018). You can find more of his recent writing on The Paris Review, Granta, and his Substack, Tao Lin.

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Daily poop. Experiencing nature. Feeling peaceful. Reading books that reduce fear, like The Truth About Contagion and Life After Life. Caring for and loving something — hard with humans, can use pets.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

Working on my writing while caring for my cats and detoxing my liver and learning.

How do you start and end your days?

Start: exercise and meditation. End: talking to myself, my spirit guides, and my soul about my day and my upcoming dreams.

Can you recall a moment when you became more aware of your health, or your relationship to it changed?

I had chronic nosebleeds as a child. A doctor scalded the inside of my nostril to try to stop them. It didn’t work. From then on, I engaged with mainstream medicine many more times due to lung collapses, chronic pain, and other acute and chronic issues. Each time, my trust in it decreased. By my mid-thirties or so, I’d lost all interest in conventional medicine. I haven’t been to a dentist or a doctor since 2015 or so. I believe the body’s best healer is itself. I’ve been working on a book titled Self Heal since 2022. I put it on hold in 2024 because I had insomnia, chronic pain, and eczema. I’ve had these since my twenties but they were getting worse in 2024 and I was confused.

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is a health and wellness writer + content creator, with a focus on bioenergetics and ancestral beauty rituals. Her medicinal makeup brand, Fauna (seed oil and synthetic-free, and made with edible ingredients), will be launching soon.

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What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Being healthy means so much more than just “not being sick.” Being healthy is about your having enough energy to feel amazing, sharp, excited, inspired and motivated for life. For your cells to have the energy to function optimally — they are the building blocks of every organ in our body! And our metabolism is how our body creates energy, it's controlled by our thyroid, and is the root of all health.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

I live a very non-toxic, holistic, and “crunchy” lifestyle. I have chickens for eggs, I make all of their food from scratch, mill my own flour, bake sourdough, make cheese…I'm obsessed with nourishing through nutrient dense and ancestral foods. It's very Weston A. Price x Ray Peat! Infused with the rituals of ancient princesses, which happens to align very much with what they teach.

How do you start and end your days?

I am obsessed with the morning and night routines of ancient princesses. There is a lot to pull from that is now scientifically backed to improve your sleep and health, while feeling incredible and nourishing.

In the evenings after making dinner, I always make sure to turn off all the regular lights, and turn on only incandescent, red light, or candle light. I use blue light-blocking glasses if I'm on a screen. I charge my phone in the bathroom; it's close enough to hear the alarm, but far enough I don't use it before bed or in the mornings. Plus, it makes me get out of bed to shut it off! I love hot baths, herbal oils, beeswax candles, and mulberry silk sheets.

The morning is *very* specific.

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is a writer in New York City and the author of some of Substack’s most beloved pieces, including “Everyone is numbing out” and this guide to your 20s. She is currently working on her first novel.

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What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Treating myself with respect: body, mind, soul.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

Work and joy. When it comes to my health, I am focused exclusively on the fundamentals: strength training a few times a week at home, cooking almost all of my meals, sleep, walking, writing, reading, socializing, prayer. I played the “margin game” quite a bit in my twenties — you know, debating the merits of one serum or supplement over another — but getting the big things done is far more deserving of my time and energy, and so much more important. If I can do those things even somewhat consistently, I feel great.

Generally, I am trying to be more present in my day-to-day life, to give myself permission to be happy and to go slower than is comfortable. I am trying to find joy in female embodiment, which has, surprisingly, been easier for me as a new mother than it was before I had a child. I grew my son inside my body, delivered him through my body, and nourished him with my body. How can I needlessly criticize myself, punish myself? It is a crime. So I am trying to shift my perspective, and see exercise, healthy diet, hydration, etc., not as “stuff to be done,” but ways to respect myself.

There’s this mistaken idea, that I fully believed as a college athlete and pre-baby, that in order for something to be “healthy” it must involve a lot of pain or suffering — the more the better. I realize now how misguided this is. Yes, it’s good to push through a tough workout, for instance, but I notice that when I am warm and kind with myself — meaning I feed myself nourishing foods (good food tastes delicious), take warm baths, do fewer reps with better form, and do not pick at my flaws in the mirror — my whole being responds.

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Kiki (@kikimancy) is a health researcher with a current focus on the Primal Diet, lymph + fascia work, and electromagnetic frequency awareness. In 2022, she hosted the Slow Beauty Immersion — a month-long private community event for women, dedicated to daily health, wellness and beauty rituals. If you’d like to be notified of similar events, join the waitlist here.

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What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Having enough energy to be creative — whether on an individual spiritual level or in the biological sense of being able to birth healthy babies — and be in service to others (giving from overflow).

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

I swing wildly between traveling and being a homebody. I lived abroad as a “digital nomad” for years and returned to the US late 2024. I am now something of a “digital homebody,” working on various marketing/media projects, homemaking, and hobbies.

Health wise, my lifestyle is suboptimal (by my own standards anyway, everyone who knows me in real life thinks I’m a health nut). I really just need to figure out how to not be tied to my computer all day. That’s my current biggest obstacle. I have big plans for 2026 to change that.

How do you start and end your days?

Wake up and pray first thing.

I take my CIAS vial out of its magnetic charging station and keep it on me throughout the day. The CIAS is an invention of Canadian naturopath Dr. Tim Goyetche. It converts EMF radiation (from devices, dirty electricity, WiFi, 5G etc) into cellular energy. Its benefits are particularly noticeable to me in hectic indoor public spaces like malls or airports, which I previously always found draining.

Next, I rinse my face, brush my teeth — lately with my homemade toothpaste,1 but I also love NOBS. After brushing my teeth, I splash my face, neck, hands and legs with blessed water, made according to the method shared in Ngolo Tesla’s latest book.

Blessed water changed my life. I mentioned earlier that I returned to the US in 2024 after years living abroad in Indonesia. Even though I moved a lot my whole life and spent my childhood split between the US and Japan, returning to the US, especially post-plandemic, was a culture shock I was genuinely not expecting. There were also several back-to-back challenges outside of my control, beyond the culture shock, and the stress took a huge toll on me health-wise. Honestly, by the end of 2025, I was the most drained and stressed out I’d been in years.

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(@the.raw.sol) is a women’s health and nutrition coach with a focus on herbalism and aligning with our true design. She’s also the founder of Gordita Skincare, a line of tallow-based products that she formulates and makes by hand.

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Health, to me, is about coherence. It is harmony between the body, the soul, the environment, and God. It is a deep sense of alignment, where life feels divinely ordered.

Coherence comes from a raw intimacy with life: being in it deeply, tasting it fully, suffering honestly when suffering is present, and then choosing to create from those experiences. When we fall out of coherence, the body often communicates through symptoms what needs our attention. We can slip out of coherence quite easily in our modern, disordered living conditions, and I think we often have to live quite intentionally to return to alignment.

I personally feel healthiest when I’m living close to nature and close to God. This is when my default state becomes faith, even when the world feels saturated in fear. I notice more synchronicities, playfulness, whimsy, and desire to live. I feel a stronger desire to engage with life instead of bracing against it. I see health as the capacity to stay present through pain and discomfort. It’s about having the energy to do what I love, and the ability to be present with the people I love, not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually.

It’s essential to care for physical health, but I think it is very important not to obsess over it. It’s meant to support your life without taking it over. There is a fine line between strengthening and honoring the body God gave us, and worshipping it. The body is something to tend to with reverence. Health is something to steward.

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(@petajean_) is a mother, author, investor, and the creator of Body Luxury — both a European wellness philosophy and the title of her latest book, out now.

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

When I think of the word “health” I think of the old food pyramid or outdated government advice. The world has “health” all topsy turvy. We’re taught to suppress our symptoms and “fight” illness. People go to the doctor for a five-minute consult and the symptom is treated in isolation without connecting the dots between the person’s psyche, their lives, their emotional burdens. I understand health differently. Symptoms are our bodies adapting and resolving. So, I don’t believe health is a total absence of symptoms.

For me, true vitality is living with vibrancy and energy most of the time, and not freaking out when the body needs to rest, or when a symptom is trying to tell us something. It’s knowing that our bodies are designed for life, and have inbuilt mechanisms to always restore life. I believe this faith and connection with the way we were created is important for health.

I always ask, what comes first, the vibrant body or the vibrant life? Our life, our minds, our emotional patterns — they are just as important to our vitality as what we eat and how we move.

In sum, being vital is having the internal resources to live how you are called to live, to create without exhaustion, to be there for the people we love, and to be well enough to notice beauty.

There’s that old proverb, “When you have your health you have 1000 dreams, when you don’t have your health, you only have one.”

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Chloé Happe (@bronzeageshawty) is a writer living in New Mexico. Her first novel, Desolation E-Girl, will be out on Not a Cult Press later this year.

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Curating your physical environment, relationships, and habits in such a way that allows you to naturally flow into a relaxed, vital, Love-is-all-encompassing version of myself. To “be healthy” means that I am living in complete alignment with my own Truth.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

I live in the high desert of New Mexico, where I have discovered is the optimal geography and environment for physical, spiritual, and mental health. I am living seven thousand feet above sea level. High-elevation living contributes to a highly-elevated way of being in the world, and highly-elevated love for yourself and others. I am currently an unemployed writer working on my first book so my lifestyle is pretty relaxed. My days are centered around my close friendships, creative projects, driving my Land Cruiser down the vast desert highways, and spending time in solitude. I milk a herd of goats at sunrise once a week. Every practice I engage in intentionally contributes to a low-cortisol lifestyle.

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Lee Tilghman (@leefromamerica) was one of the OG wellness influencers of the 2010s, widely credited with bringing trends like smoothie bowls and charcoal water into the mainstream. After stepping away from the industry, she went on to write If You Don’t Like This, I Will Die (2025), a memoir charting the darker side of the influencer economy. You can find more of her writing on .

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Putting yourself first.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

Ritualistic, intuitive, energetic, courageous.

How do you start and end your days?

I start my day by getting up around 6:00 and laying in bed with just my thoughts until 6:30. Then I go up and make coffee while my fiancé sleeps in. I enjoy a few moments of stillness in the living room which are vital for my day. I light incense or palo santo then whip out my journal and fill 1-3 pages with everything I’m thinking, feeling, and fearing. It’s a brain dump. Most often it’s just light record keeping, like what we’re doing that weekend and what I have on the docket for the day. But I love it and it keeps my head on straight.

Then, I lace up my shoes and go on a long walk with my dog Samson. We walk by the water for anywhere from 30-90 minutes, depending on the day. 4 days a week, I’ll keep exercising after that, either strength, cardio, pilates, or sculpt. Then I am at my desk or filming content by 9:30/10. I break for lunch around 1:00, leftovers or a big tuna salad. Keep it simple. Then I keep working until 5 or 6, which is when I try to log off and work on dinner. Sometimes I’ll work more after dinner, and I try not to, but that’s just how it is right now.

I’m in bed or the bath by 9:30. I love to read, do a red light face mask, or a little face massage / lymphatic drainage before bed. I love climbing into bed and talking about my day with my fiancé. It’s such a silly time of day, the liminal night. We’re both the silliest then.

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