Real Health with Karl Henry

Between Covid, lockdowns, Christmas and what 2021 has in store for us all, it can be hard to keep your spirits up and focus on the positive that is still out there.In the same way that you have to build good exercise habits and good food habits, you also need to build a positive mindset habit as well.Just how can you do this and how will it expand and benefit your life even more? Well, this week’s guest on Real Health, Fiona Brennan, is a clinical hypnotherapist, a best-selling author, TedX speaker and the mental health expert on Today FM and she joins me with lots of great tips and advice on developing your positive habit.Fiona talks about the importance of self-love and acceptance, she explains the Positive Pause technique and how it can help deal with everyday stress, and she even tells me why feeling negative emotions are an important part of our coping mechanism.“It's essential for us to be able to go through the very uncomfortable feeling of whether it's anxiety, stress, sadness, grief,” she says. “We're able to see that when we get closer to an emotion, it starts to happen itself naturally as it dissolves and eases through our own loving attention.”Stay healthy and safe and do keep in touch with me for daily postings on Instagram and Twitter @KarlHenryPT.Don’t forget to rate, review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts from.For more episodes, tips and advice from the show just go to:www.independent.ie/podcasts/the-re…health-podcast/The Real Health podcast is in association with Laya Healthcare.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

He’s the world’s fastest-growing online, personal trainer, is a global fitness sensation known for his no-nonsense approach to health and fitness training and I’m delighted to say that James Smith is this week’s guest on Real Health.His book in 2019, Not a Diet Book, was a huge best-seller and James is back with another hit called Not a Life Coach in which he challenges everything you thought you knew about the path to fulfilment and happiness.James is honest, unapologetic and outspoken and shares with me some of the key areas he believes you need to focus on to succeed in life. From the importance of small steps for exponential growth to building your foundation, working on your motivation and creating the right environment to succeed, there’s a huge amount of advice you can glean from this interview.“When we want to build muscle it's about creating the stimulus and then creating an environment to host your body,” James explains to me. “Good sleep, good nutrition, good meal frequency, good rest and in that right environment, similar to a plant, muscles grow, plants grow. “But when it comes to lifestyle, it's something that a lot of people overlook, they don't respect how important everything around them is. They think 'oh job, this is how much I get paid', they think 'oh relationship, this is how many times I'm having sex', that's fine and they can neglect the bigger picture of all of the encompassing parts that play a role.”Stay healthy and safe and do keep in touch with me for daily postings on Instagram and Twitter @KarlHenryPT.Don’t forget to rate, review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts from.For more episodes, tips and advice from the show just go to:www.independent.ie/podcasts/the-re…health-podcast/The Real Health podcast is in association with Laya Healthcare.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week’s guest is maybe not one you would normally associate with Real Health, but I’m delighted to be joined by Lyra, the Cork singer-songwriter who is making serious waves in Ireland, the UK, and America.Lyra’s song Falling was featured in Grey’s Anatomy and nominated for Single of the Year at the RTE Choice Music Awards, while her hit single Mother featured on Spotify’s Viral Daily 50.Her new song is called New Day and for anyone that saw her perform it on the Late, Late Show a few weeks ago you can’t help but agree with the title of ‘Beyoncé with a Cork accent’ that has been given to her.Like so many artists, the Covid lockdown put a stumbling block in her career path and she speaks to me about those problems.“I really struggled for the first two weeks of it,” she tells me. “And I just ate and drank myself into a mind of craziness and I gave myself that time to be like that because I feel like I had to go through that process. I said then 'right, cope yourself on now, get back on saddle, there's nothing you can do, everyone's on the same side’ and I was just like feck this, I need to get myself out of my sweats, I need to put on some more see-through flouncy kind of clothes, go back into myself, start howling at my computer and just write songs as much as I can.”Plus Lyra also talks about the pressures of performing, body confidence, and why she is a firm believer in natural health remedies, even going so far as fermenting her own natural antibiotics.Stay healthy and safe and do keep in touch with me for daily postings on Instagram and Twitter @KarlHenryPT.Don’t forget to rate, review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts from.For more episodes, tips and advice from the show just go to:www.independent.ie/podcasts/the-re…health-podcast/The Real Health podcast is in association with Laya Healthcare.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For this week’s show I wanted to focus on your gut. Not your gut instinct or going with your gut, but gut health. It’s a topic I’ve covered before on Real Health but for this episode I wanted to focus the 10 myths around gut health.There are a lot of misconceptions and misinformation around the issue, so to find out more and to get some advice on how to best deal with your gut health, I spoke to Lorraine Maher a Specialist Gastroenterology Dietitian with the Blackrock Clinic.Lorraine gives some great practical advice backed up with scientific study and amongst the ten myths, we discuss bloating, what causes it and how to help it, gluten-free and why it’s not necessarily healthier, plus she explains the gut-brain axis and why it’s so important, especially when it comes to Irritable Bowel Syndrome or IBS.“Think of it like a super-highway of traffic going up and down and there's a traffic jam or roadworks and the messages aren't going up and down as they normally would,” she tells me. “So it's nobody's fault that they have IBS or they didn't cause IBS or what they're eating didn't cause IBS, so there's no guilt needed. It's just a functional issue in that the function of your gut isn't working. “But I think that for people who have IBS, know that there's a whole raft of evidence-based interventions you can use to manage it and you don't have to put all your eggs in the diet basket. There's lots of things that you can do so you don't feel that you're on your own and you don't have to put up with it.”Stay healthy and safe and do keep in touch with me for daily postings on Instagram and Twitter @KarlHenryPT.Don’t forget to rate, review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts from.For more episodes, tips and advice from the show just go to:www.independent.ie/podcasts/the-re…health-podcast/The Real Health podcast is in association with Laya Healthcare.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For this week’s episode of Real Health I’m delighted to welcome Dr. Jason Fung back to the show. Dr. Fung is a Toronto-based nephrologist and a world leading expert in intermittent fasting and low-carb diets and when he spoke to me a few weeks ago his insights into the truth about calories in-calories out were a huge hit with our listeners and so he agreed to come back on to really delve into the details and benefits of intermittent fasting.Dr Fung explains what intermittent fasting is, why our constant snacking and eating is only a development of recent decades, and he highlights how normal it was for people to go 12-14 hours between dinner and breakfast the next day.Dr. Fung is a strong advocate in intermittent fasting for obesity and weight loss especially and he also espouses its overall health benefits when done correctly and safely. “The point is that it's a natural cycle, there's nothing wrong with it,” he tells me. “It's something that people should be doing every day, but it has been sort of lost in the mists of time. It's not something I just made up, it's been around for thousands and thousands of years and it's what allowed us to survive as a species when there were some food shortages which happens periodically, usually during a winter.”“So, what we're talking about is: if you don't eat, your body is going to use stored energy. So, if you are overweight, or if you have Type 2 diabetes, where your sugar is very high, your blood sugar is very high, then simply let your body use it. If you have too much body fat, that is the disease of obesity, then, what is simpler than letting your body use that body fat because that is precisely the reason you carry it.”Stay healthy and safe and do keep in touch with me for daily postings on Instagram and Twitter @KarlHenryPT.Don’t forget to rate, review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts from.For more episodes, tips and advice from the show just go to:www.independent.ie/podcasts/the-re…health-podcast/The Real Health podcast is in association with Laya Healthcare.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For this week’s Real Health I’m joined by gym owner and fitness instructor Leeanne Moore to get some winter fitness tips to help in the coming weeks and months.The cold, dark evenings can make it hard to get motivated to go for a run or work out, but by keeping active in some small way every day, it will do wonders for your physical and mental well-being.Leeanne also talks about diet and nutrition and the food choices she believes we should make.“I personally don't count calories and I don't track macros and things like that but I do just try to make the best possible choices I can make every single day,” she says. “And you know why that's good? Because it doesn't take anything off the table. I'll have a pizza at the weekend and I'll have chocolate nearly every single day. But I also have fruit and vegetable juices every day, we have portions of veg with our dinner, we have salads for lunch, we have homemade soups. We all know the foods that are good for us.” Plus she explains her career change that saw her make the leap into personal training,“It made sense to what my kind of morals for my life, my goals for my life and the happiness of my life,” she tells me. “I was so ready to change my day-to-day and to do something that I knew would give me fulfilment.”Stay healthy and safe and do keep in touch with me for daily postings on Instagram and Twitter @KarlHenryPT.Don’t forget to rate, review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts from.For more episodes, tips and advice from the show just go to:www.independent.ie/podcasts/the-re…health-podcast/The Real Health podcast is in association with Laya Healthcare.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

With the clocks going back, winter and the dark nights are closing in, and as we prepare for six weeks of Level 5 lockdown, I thought this would be a good time to find out how we can help boost our immunity and increase Vitamin D levels or the ‘sunshine vitamin’ as we spend more time indoors.This week’s guest is Helena Scully a registered nutritionist and first author of a five year study from Trinity College and the MISA Unit at St. James’s Hospital that has looked into vitamin D deficiencies in Irish people.Helena has some really interesting insights into those parts of the population that are showing deficiencies in vitamin D and reasons why and she also explains how we can all ensure we boost our levels of this important vitamin to help in our battle against Covid.“We currently do know that vitamin D is associated with immune health,” she tells me. “It's involved in upregulation of the immune system and it also has anti-inflammatory effects and then taken together, this has been looked at in respect of respiratory conditions or respiratory infections and asthma, and vitamin D has been associated with improved outcomes in these kind of conditions. So it does make sense that vitamin D will be associated with conditions such as Covid. There is a basis in physiology as how it would make sense that vitamin D is having an effect on Covid infection.”To read more about the study that was partially funded by Avonmore, the paper is available in the journal ‘Nutrients’ here: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/12/9/2663/htmlStay healthy and safe and do keep in touch with me for daily postings on Instagram and Twitter @KarlHenryPT.Don’t forget to rate, review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts from.For more episodes, tips and advice from the show just go to:www.independent.ie/podcasts/the-re…health-podcast/The Real Health podcast is in association with Laya Healthcare.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week’s show is part of a series I like to call ‘Life Lessons’ with some of Ireland’s most respected and most famous personalities and my guest, Francis Brennan, is certainly no stranger to Irish television screens having shot to fame on the RTE series At Your Service and of course Francis Brennan’s Grand Tour.Francis is also co-owner of the Park Hotel in Kenmare and author of best-selling books on home management and travel and his latest is his Homekeeper’s Diary for 2021.Francis has an infectious, perennially good-natured outlook on life and in the midst of Covid and cancellations to his hotel (he just got €100,000 worth of cancellations before we spoke) I wanted to find out how he kept his positivity going and what the secret to his success in life is.Francis also spoke to me about the importance of faith and religion throughout his life and why you must always believe that things are going to work out in the end.“I don't know anything about drive, I just do what I do and today is the very same,” he tells me. “I don't ever think like - I'm not good at planning out, I never sit down and say 'I'll own this and I'll own that' other than I knew I wanted to be in the hotel business and everything else just falls into place.” “There's a man above of course with whom I believe in very much, the God above, and he looks after me. I mean I just land on me feet every time and I think 'oh my God, he's great' and I'm lucky to have a faith as well as everything else so I'm just one of those lucky people.” Stay healthy and safe and do keep in touch with me for daily postings on Instagram and Twitter @KarlHenryPT.Don’t forget to rate, review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts from.For more episodes, tips and advice from the show just go to:www.independent.ie/podcasts/the-re…health-podcast/The Real Health podcast is in association with Laya Healthcare.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week’s Real Health is focusing on healthy eating and healthy living with one of Ireland’s leading fitness experts, Derval O’Rourke. Derval is a three-time Irish Olympian and former World Indoor Champion and after retiring from athletics she has become a best-selling author and also developed her own digital platform on health, nutrition and self-care at Derval.ie.Empowering people to live well, in body and mind, is what she aims to do and she explains to me how she has done it for herself, why Sunday night planning is so important to her and how she has dealt with criticism along the way.“Whatever my opinion is on myself, what I'm doing, that's the number one opinion I need to tune into,” she tells me. “And sometimes my own voice in my head, like everybody, isn't as positive as it should be and I have to check myself and say 'right Derval you need to back yourself a bit here'. So, the nice stuff is lovely but also you have to care more about what you think yourself than what everybody else thinks.”Stay healthy and safe and do keep in touch with me for daily postings on Instagram and Twitter @KarlHenryPT.Don’t forget to rate, review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts from.For more episodes, tips and advice from the show just go to:www.independent.ie/podcasts/the-re…health-podcast/The Real Health podcast is in association with Laya Healthcare.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week’s Real Health guest needs no introduction to TV viewers having graced Irish and international TV for more than two decades from Ireland AM to the Big Breakfast, the Swan and Dancing with the Stars.But, as a former model and TV presenter, that brought with it its own difficulties and pressures to look ‘perfect’ on screen.Now aged 47, Amanda Byram has opened up about her darkest moments and how she turned her life around in her debut book, ‘The Switch – the secret to overcoming the pressures of perfection and finding health and happiness’ and she explained to me just how she dealt with her toughest days.Amanda talks openly and honestly about her early body image issues, the pressures she faced in her career and ultimately how she overcame it all.“I've had so many knockbacks in life as we all do,” she tells me. “And sometimes it's really difficult to go 'no, I believe I'm brilliant' because that's not the belief, it's not that I believe I'm brilliant, it's that I believe that I have the ability to hold it together long enough to do a good job because if someone believes in me enough to give me the job, ok I got to take that deep breath and really believe in myself, although sometimes it is really difficult.”Stay healthy and safe and do keep in touch with me for daily postings on Instagram and Twitter @KarlHenryPT.Don’t forget to rate, review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts from.For more episodes, tips and advice from the show just go to:www.independent.ie/podcasts/the-re…health-podcast/The Real Health podcast is in association with Laya Healthcare.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.