Normally people discover they're iron deficient during a visit to their GP that was prompted by feeling unusually fatigued. I learned abut my anaemia in slightly more unusual way. During the production of my new film about mindfulness I had a team of scientists tracking my biological markers as I meditated every day for a year. This included various brain scans, blood tests and saliva analysis. When it came time to reveal my saliva results, we hit an unexpected anomaly; “If your cortisol levels were any lower, you’d probably be dead,” the scientist who was analysing the data told me.While... Read full article »

For some, mindfulness is a life-saving psychological tool that pulled them out of the depths of depression, for others it’s a way to disentangle from the grip of addiction. Some use mindfulness to face chronic pain or stressful emotions, while others use it to achieve peak performance at work.Some believe that mindfulness is an innate human capability of such great import that it should be taught in schools and used in parliaments, while others see it as a marketing device, with which to sell mayonnaise and colouring books. No matter what you think mindfulness is or what it does, there’s... Read full article »

As a 38-year-old, socially minded, mother and health journalist living in Australia, you wouldn’t expect one of my all-time heroes to be a conservative former president of the United States. But Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th US president, is exactly that, so much so, that my first child is named after him. Roosevelt inspires me because despite being plagued by constant health issues, including severe childhood asthma, partial blindness and deafness, multiple bone fractures, tropical fevers, rheumatism, and a gunshot wound in the chest, he still led an extraordinarily active life. In his 60-year lifespan, Roosevelt climbed mountains, became a cattle... Read full article »