Start Here
Everything you need to know about The Habit Healers in five minutes.
Hi, I’m Dr. Laurie Marbas, a board-certified family and lifestyle medicine physician. I started The Habit Healers because most health advice gets the order wrong. It starts big: overhaul your diet, commit to a program, change everything by Monday.
That approach breaks. Reliably.
This newsletter is built on a different premise, one small, well-chosen habit, repeated until it sticks, changes more than any overhaul. The science backs this up. So does every patient I’ve ever watched succeed.
What We Cover
Everything here is organized around five areas that drive metabolic health: blood sugar regulation, nourishing movement, stress regulation, community connection, and restorative sleep.
These aren’t five separate topics. They’re one connected system. Cortisol disrupts insulin signaling, poor sleep increases appetite hormones the next day, and chronic stress changes where your body stores fat. A ten-minute walk after dinner lowers post-meal glucose, reduces cortisol, improves sleep onset that night, and becomes a conversation with your partner if you take it together. One input, four downstream effects.
We help you find the right lever and pull it.
Your Weekly Schedule
Tuesdays and Thursdays bring habit blueprints: focused guides on specific habits and the science behind them, with printable worksheets for paid subscribers.
Saturdays are deep dives. Long-form breakdowns of the biology driving everything from insulin resistance to brain health to circadian rhythm. If you want to understand why a habit works, this is your day.
Sundays give you one thing to do on Monday. Small, science-backed habits you can start immediately.
Fridays are the subscriber-only chat, a private space where paid members ask questions, share wins, and get direct answers.
You don’t need to keep up with all of it. Pick one thread and let it build.
The Periodic Table of Healing Habits
We mapped 30 micro-habits across all five areas into a single reference tool. Each one takes minutes, not hours, and the “active ingredients” listed are real mechanisms. The “side effects” are what actually happens when people start.
Find the one that fits your life this week and do it until it stops requiring effort. Then add another.
Where to Start Reading
10 Powerful Habits of People Who Age Well is the most popular article on The Habit Healers.
Want to Be the 80-Year-Old Who Still Hikes? Start Here. covers movement, strength, and what functional fitness actually looks like.
Nine Tiny Healing Habits That Lower Your Blood Sugar is the most practical starting point. Most of these take under two minutes.
If you have a specific topic in mind, browse the full archive here and search for whatever you’re working on.
Free vs. Paid
Every subscriber receives every article. Free subscribers get full access to Sunday posts and can read the free portions of Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday articles, which cover the science and the "why."
Paid subscribers unlock the rest: the full protocols, printable worksheets, the Friday private chat, and the 30-Day Blood Sugar Reset, a daily email course that delivers one micro-habit every morning for a month. (Access will be provided in the paid subscriber welcome email.)
The Only Thing That’s Required
Read one post and try one habit. That’s enough to start.
Welcome to The Habit Healers.
Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA
Founder, The Habit Healers
Help! I’m not understanding the amounts listed in mg. For example Protein First Facts lists Satiety Signal 500mg….Insulin Stability.
500mg of protein is a very small amount, about .02oz. What am I missing?