Thrive on Plants

What if the way you eat is directly shaping how you think, feel, and cope?
Serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine- the molecules your brain uses to regulate mood, motivation, and stress response- are synthesized from essential amino acids. Amino acids that come from food. That means what you put on your plate every day either supports your brain health or quietly undermines it. 
In this episode of Thrive on Plants, I sit down with Dr. Elizabeth Winings, Psychiatric-Mental Health Nurse Practitioner, Diplomate of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, Assistant Professor of Nursing at Jacksonville University, and founder of Winings Wellness, a seven-provider integrative mental health practice built on a premise most clinics still haven't adopted: mental health care should be preventive, not just reactive.
Dr. Winings' path to this work started at the VA, watching patients lose limbs to poorly controlled diabetes and asking a question most clinicians don't ask out loud: when do we stop treating the consequences and start addressing the cause? That question led her to a doctoral internship at TrueNorth Health Center in California, years in inpatient pediatric psychiatry, and ultimately to founding a practice where nutrition, lifestyle medicine, and mental health care operate as one.
In this episode, we discuss:
The concept of preventive mental health care: what it is, why most people don't know it's possible, and how to start building it now
How emotions work as neurobiological signals and why learning to read them changes everything
The grief, identity, and psychological weight of cancer survivorship that medicine rarely addresses
Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), nervous system regulation, and the long arc of mental health across a lifetime
Breaking down cultural and systemic barriers to mental health care access
What Dr. Winings actually asks her patients about food at every single visit
How to know when your intuition is speaking and how to stop talking yourself out of it
This is a conversation about eating, thinking, feeling, and building a life that is not just longer, but genuinely more whole.
Connect with Dr. Elizabeth Winings
Website: https://winingswellness.com/
Additional resources to help you thrive on plants:
🌱 Access the free Plant-Powered Body course: Access Here
🌱 Take the free health assessment for women 40+: Start Here  
🌱  Watch every episode on YouTube
⭐️ If you loved this episode, please leave a review! ⭐️
Here’s how to do it on Apple Podcasts:
Go to the Thrive on Plants Podcast page: Click here
Scroll down to the ‘Ratings & Reviews’ section. Tap ‘Write a Review’ 
(you may be prompted to log in with your Apple ID). 
Thank you for your support!

Most women over 50 are doing everything they were told to do. Eating less. Exercising more. And getting nowhere.
In this episode of Thrive on Plants, Dr. Daphne Bascom sits down with Debra Atkinson, an exercise physiologist, former Iowa State kinesiology lecturer, and founder of Flipping 50, to discuss why the old fitness rules stop working in midlife and what actually builds a strong, capable body for the long haul.
Debra spent more than thirty years in the fitness industry before realizing that almost everything women had been taught about exercise was built on research done on young men. So she built what was missing: a science-based, hormone-smart approach to training, nutrition, and recovery for women navigating menopause and beyond.
This is a practical, myth-busting conversation about strength, sleep, stress, and what it really means to age on your own terms.
What we cover:
Why "eat less, exercise more" backfires in midlife, and what to do instead
The two at-home tests (grip strength and the sit-to-stand) that tell you more than your scale
Why body composition matters far more than the number you weigh
The sleep research showing better-rested women lost more fat and kept more muscle
Why your ability to recover, not your ability to work hard, becomes the key to aging well
The one strength move Debra would keep above all others
Building a legacy of health that ripples out to the people who are watching you
Whether you are 40, 50, 60 or 80 years young, this conversation will change how you think about aging racefully
Debra Atkinson, MS, CSCS
Founder of Flipping 50, TEDx speaker, and bestselling author of You Still Got It, Girl! and Hot, Not Bothered.
Website: https://www.flippingfifty.com
Instagram: @flipping50tv
Podcast: The Flipping 50 Show
#DebraAtkinson #FitnessAfter50 #Flipping50 #MenopauseFitness #WomenOver50 #StrengthTraining #MidlifeHealth #Menopause #HealthyAging #Longevity #WomensHealth #BodyComposition #PlantBased #ThriveOnPlants 
This episode is for educational purposes and is not a substitute for personalized medical advice. Always consult your own clinician.
Additional resources to help you thrive on plants:
🌱 Access the free Plant-Powered Body course: Access Here
🌱 Take the free health assessment for women 40+: Start Here  
🌱  Watch every episode on YouTube
⭐️ If you loved this episode, please leave a review! ⭐️
Here’s how to do it on Apple Podcasts:
Go to the Thrive on Plants Podcast page: Click here
Scroll down to the ‘Ratings & Reviews’ section. Tap ‘Write a Review’ 
(you may be prompted to log in with your Apple ID). 
Thank you for your support!

Everyone worries about losing muscle as they age. Almost everyone is worried about the wrong thing.
Dr. Brad Currier has spent his career studying what actually keeps us strong and functional into our 70s, 80s, and 90s. He earned his PhD under Professor Stuart Phillips, helped write the latest ACSM resistance training guidelines, and now leads clinical research at Timeline in Switzerland.
In this episode of Thrive on Plants, Dr. Daphne Bascom asks him the questions most people never think to ask. The answers reframe how you should think about aging, from your muscles all the way down to the power plants inside your cells.
No hype. No overpromising. Just a clear-eyed look at what the science supports, what it doesn't yet, and what you can do about it starting this week.
Here's what you'll learn:
Why the number on your DEXA scan may be lying to you about how well you'll age
The difference between muscle mass, muscle strength, and muscle power, and why the last one decides whether you catch yourself when you trip
A strength test you can run in under a minute, no lab required
What mitochondria actually do, beyond the line you memorized in high school biology
Mitophagy: the cellular cleanup crew you lose with age, and why it may matter more than any supplement
The pomegranate problem: why loading up on the "right" foods may not give you what you think
The truth about urolithin A, including where the evidence is strong and where it's still an open question
The single longevity metric Dr. Currier calls unreliable and clinically useless
About Dr. Brad Currier:
Dr. Currier leads clinical research at Timeline, a Switzerland-based company studying cellular and mitochondrial health. His background is in muscle physiology, aging, and nutrition.
Website: https://www.timeline.com/
Blog: https://www.timeline.com/blog/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bradcurrier.phd/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brad-currier
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=SxVmAooAAAAJ&hl=en
Additional resources to help you thrive on plants:
🌱 Access the free Plant-Powered Body course: Access Here
🌱 Take the free health assessment for women 40+: Start Here  
🌱  Watch every episode on YouTube
⭐️ If you loved this episode, please leave a review! ⭐️
Here’s how to do it on Apple Podcasts:
Go to the Thrive on Plants Podcast page: Click here
Scroll down to the ‘Ratings & Reviews’ section. Tap ‘Write a Review’ 
(you may be prompted to log in with your Apple ID). 
Thank you for your support!

Beta-hydroxybutyrate, the primary ketone your body produces, is turning out to be one of the most compelling molecules in longevity and healthspan science. It fuels your brain when glucose falls short. It influences gene expression. It signals your cells to burn fat more efficiently. And a single dose has been shown to improve cardiac output, ejection fraction, and stroke volume in patients with heart failure.
Dr. Latt Mansor grew up in Malaysia surrounded by chronic disease. His father died of a stroke when he was 17. His half-brother died of a heart attack at 43. His mother's side of the family carries decades of obesity and diabetes. That personal history took him from Oxford, where he studied the diabetic heart under low-oxygen conditions, to leading a $6 million Department of Defense contract on exogenous ketones and elite military performance. Now he has come full circle, using what peak-performance science has revealed to help build the case for prevention.
Dr. Mansor holds a DPhil from the University of Oxford and serves as Research Director at H.V.M.N., the company behind Ketone IQ. 
In this conversation, we cover:
What exogenous ketones actually are and how they differ from the endogenous ketones your body already makes
How beta-hydroxybutyrate acts as a signaling molecule that binds directly to DNA and why a recent transcriptomics analysis showed it affected up to 300 genes
The brain energy implications for women navigating perimenopause and menopause
Exogenous ketones and GLP-1 receptor agonists: can they work together to protect lean mass and reduce brain fog during weight loss
New unpublished appetite suppression data showing Ketone IQ's direct effects on GLP-1, ghrelin, and leptin
Why Dr. Mansor calls it "the adaptive fuel" and what that means for how you use it
The research on exogenous ketones is still catching up to the biology.  The long-term human data is incomplete. But the mechanistic rationale is compelling, the early clinical signals are hard to ignore, and this conversation will give you the scientific foundation to decide whether any of it belongs in your longevity supplement stack.

Connect with Dr. Latt Mansor:
Social media: @lattmansor
Website: ketoneiq.com

Thrive on Plants:
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thrive-on-plants/id1793550910
YouTube: youtube.com/@drdaphnebascom
Instagram: @WingmanDaphne
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/DaphneBascom 
This episode is not sponsored.
Additional resources to help you thrive on plants:
🌱 Access the free Plant-Powered Body course: Access Here
🌱 Take the free health assessment for women 40+: Start Here  
🌱  Watch every episode on YouTube
⭐️ If you loved this episode, please leave a review! ⭐️
Here’s how to do it on Apple Podcasts:
Go to the Thrive on Plants Podcast page: Click here
Scroll down to the ‘Ratings & Reviews’ section. Tap ‘Write a Review’ 
(you may be prompted to log in with your Apple ID). 
Thank you for your support!

Most women are told menopause is a hormone story. The science suggests it is also an energy story, one that starts inside your cells decades before your last period.
Dr. Siobhan Mitchell is a neuroscientist with a PhD, 80+ peer-reviewed publications, and 25 years of research on how nutrition shapes brain aging. She started this work after watching her grandmother die of Alzheimer's and she has spent her career trying to make sure that never has to happen to anyone else. She currently serves as Chief Science and Technology Officer at MitoQ. This episode is not sponsored.
In this conversation, we go deep into the science that most physicians are still not talking about: how estrogen loss during perimenopause and menopause triggers a cascade of mitochondrial changes that affect your brain, your metabolism, your muscles, and your cardiovascular system, all at once.
What you will learn in this episode:
Why your mitochondria, not the calendar, determine how fast you age
How estrogen acts as a master regulator of cellular energy, and what happens when it disappears
Why women's brains start to struggle with glucose during perimenopause and what the research shows about preserving cognitive function
What S-Equol is, why only 25% of Western women can produce it from soy, and how to change that
The biomarker GDF-15 that most doctors are not ordering, and why it should be on your radar
How plant-based fats, MCTs, fiber, B vitamins, and polyphenols feed your mitochondria in ways no supplement can replicate
Dr. Mitchell also addresses the honest evidence base for MitoQ, including where the data is strong and where more research is still needed.
If you are navigating perimenopause, postmenopause, or want to understand how to protect your healthspan, you will enjoy learning from Dr. Mitchell in this episode.
Connect with Dr. Siobhan Mitchell:
MitoQ: https://www.mitoq.com
Research: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=s6LruaUAAAAJ&hl=en
Additional resources to help you thrive on plants:
🌱 Access the free Plant-Powered Body course: Access Here
🌱 Take the free health assessment for women 40+: Start Here  
🌱  Watch every episode on YouTube
⭐️ If you loved this episode, please leave a review! ⭐️
Here’s how to do it on Apple Podcasts:
Go to the Thrive on Plants Podcast page: Click here
Scroll down to the ‘Ratings & Reviews’ section. Tap ‘Write a Review’ 
(you may be prompted to log in with your Apple ID). 
Thank you for your support!