Master Stress with Dr. S
Welcome to Master Stress with Dr. S, the podcast that empowers high-achievers to unlock their full potential by mastering stress and achieving burnout-proof success. Hosted by Dr. Safia Debar, a renowned stress expert, medical doctor, speaker and coach. Each episode dives deep into the neuroscience of stress, blending logic and intuition to give you practical tools for thriving in a fast-paced world. Whether you’re navigating the pressures of leadership, striving for peak performance, or yearning for a life of balance and freedom, Dr. Safia Debar will guide you through powerful strategies, expert insights, and personal stories to help you regain control, nurture your well-being, and live authentically. Tune in to discover how to stop stress from holding you back and start living your best, empowered life.
Episodes
86 episodes
Understanding Cancer: Hallmarks, Risk Factors, and Taking Back Control
In this episode of Master Stress with Dr. S, the host introduces a series on cancer, sharing personal experience supporting relatives through treatment and grief, and emphasizing that education and facts can reduce fear. She explains cancer as ...
Part 2: Emma Beswick: Why Generic Health Advice Fails Your Specific Biology
Dr. S continues a conversation with Emma Beswick of LifeCode GX about nutrigenomics and key SNPs affecting stress and health. Emma explains MAOA “warrior gene” variants that influence dopamine and adrenaline breakdown, and a GABA receptor SNP l...
Your DNA Is the Blueprint You've Been Ignoring. Emma Beswick part 1: Nutrigenomics isn't biohacking, It's reading the instructions you were already given.
Dr. S introduces a longevity series focused on basics over “shiny” biohacks, emphasizing DNA, nutrigenomics, and that genes are not destiny due to epigenetics. She welcomes Emma Beswick, founder and CEO of LifeCode GX, to discuss genomics and h...
Part 2: Dr Jeff Gladden: What Is Your Biohacking Actually Trying to Fix?
Dr. S continues her conversation with Dr. Jeff Gladden about reframing longevity and health optimization by asking better questions rather than following fear-driven biohacking trends. Gladden argues that adulthood overvalues competence and rig...
Longevity Beyond Biohacking: Dr. Jeff Gladden on Exponential Aging, Purpose, and Health Optimization - Part 1
Dr. S introduces a podcast series on longevity and interviews Dr. Jeffrey Gladden, a cardiologist-turned-longevity physician and founder of Gladden Longevity in Dallas. Gladden describes how, despite being told his labs were “normal for his age...
The Map Has Always Existed. What Every Ancient Tradition Agreed On — and What You Can Do About It Today
Dr. Safia Debar closes the “When Science Met Soul” series by highlighting the shared conclusion across 5,000 years of clinical observation: the body has innate intelligence and moves toward health when its rhythms, nourishment, relationships, a...
I Am Because We Are: African Traditional Medicine and the Wisdom of Ubuntu
Dr. Safia Debar continues “When Science Met Soul” by highlighting African traditional medicine through the story of Charles Stevens, who recovered from tuberculosis in the late 1800s using a South African healer’s plant remedy later identified ...
Ibn Sina and Prophetic Medicine: The Tradition That Taught the World — and the One That Keeps Being Proved Right
Dr. Safia Debar continues her “When Science Met Soul” series with a tour of two coexisting medical traditions: Ibn Sina (Avicenna)’s empirically grounded Canon of Medicine (1025 CE) and Tibb an-Nabawi (prophetic medicine) rooted in revelation a...
Hippocrates, Humours, and Why Your Gut Is Still Running the Show
Dr. Safia Debar explains that Western medicine’s founders, Hippocrates and Galen, centered care on the body’s innate capacity to heal and the physician’s role in supporting it (“first, do no harm”), a philosophy she says modern practice kept in...
Traditional Chinese Medicine: The Nobel Prize and the Ancient Map
Dr. S continues a series on ancient medical systems by exploring Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) through modern scientific parallels. The episode opens with Tu Youyou’s 2015 Nobel-winning discovery of artemisinin for malaria, traced to a 1,7...
Ayurveda: The 3,000-Year-Old Science That Described the Vagus Nerve
Dr. S begins a series on ancient traditions by exploring Ayurveda as a 3,000-year-old medical system, not “exotic wellness,” and highlights parallels with modern science, especially the vagus nerve, the gut-brain axis, and personalized medicine...
What Did the Ancients Know That Your Doctor Doesn't?
Dr. S introduces the “When Science Met Soul” series with an overview of major ancient medical traditions and the shared premise that humans are an integrated body–mind–soul system with an innate tendency toward balance, while disease reflects b...
Who Decided Your Body and Soul Were Separate — And Why Should You Care
The episode asks why, despite 30 years of peer-reviewed evidence linking spiritual practice to longer lifespan, better health span, improved immune function, and reduced mental health issues, spiritual health is absent from clinical guidelines,...
I Believe in Something. I Just Don't Recognise the Version I Was Given." A different kind of consultation — on belief, belonging, and what the science says about coming home to yourself
Dr. S revisits spirituality as a clinical intervention, acknowledging that the term can trigger memories of shame, coercion, or abuse within religious settings, and clarifying that harmful delivery by people and institutions is not the same as ...
How Breathwork & brainwaves change everything
In this episode of 'Master Stress with Dr. S,' Dr. Safia Debar, despite battling pharyngitis, dives deep into the transformative potential of breath work. She shares a personal experience that revolutionized her understanding of stress and heal...
Why Do I Have Everything — And Still Feel Empty? The Science of Spirituality
A medical doctor introduces episode one of “When Science Met Soul,” arguing that ancient medical systems treated body, mind, and soul as inseparable, while modern Western medicine adopted a body–soul split rooted in Descartes’ 1641 dualism deal...
The Conversation That Changed Everything — Part 3 with Anna Bjurstam - Pausing, Compassion, and Integrating Science and Soul
In the final episode of a conversation with Six Senses wellness pioneer Anna Bjurstam, she and the host discuss stepping out of the “hamster wheel” through intentional pauses and choosing accessible practices such as calming music, walking, bre...
The Conversation That Changed Everything — Part 2 with Anna Bjurstam, Six Senses Wellness Pioneer
Dr. Safia Debar continues her conversation with Anna Bjurstam of Six Senses about integrating scientific and spiritual approaches to health, challenging the separation between clinician and soul. They discuss how practices like prayer, meditati...
The confession — and the conversation that started everything — Part 1 with Anna Bjurstam
Dr. Safia Debar introduces a podcast series on spirituality as a free, evidence-backed intervention linked in peer-reviewed research to improved heart rate variability, lower blood pressure, reduced cardiovascular and stroke risk, lower inflamm...
Holding It All Together? This Letter Is for You
Dr. S continues a multi-episode exploration of addiction and rescuer dynamics, following episode 58 and subsequent conversations about loving someone with addiction, why people stay in these patterns, and how to care without losing oneself. Thi...
How to Love Without Losing Yourself
Dr. S continues the addiction series by focusing on loved ones and the central question of how to love someone with addiction without losing yourself, staying compassionate without becoming responsible, and stepping out of the rescuer role. The...
Why Do We Stay for So Long?
Dr. S continues a series on addiction by exploring why empathic, responsible people stay in rescuer dynamics and why leaving can feel so hard, framing it through attachment patterns, nervous-system regulation, and behavioral psychology. She exp...
Who Loves Someone With Addiction?
Dr. S introduces a 3–4 episode series sparked by a conversation with Charlie Engle, focusing not on demonizing “the addict” but on what happens to those who love someone with addiction. She describes how a partner, parent, or friend can become ...
REPLAY: The Fundamentals of Gut Health
In this episode of 'Master Stress with Dr. S,' Dr. Safia Debar delves into the critical importance of gut health and its fundamental role in overall wellness. She begins by stressing the interconnected nature of gut health with various body sys...
Why Can’t People Just Stop? The Medical Reality of Addiction
Dr. S continues the podcast’s addiction theme by reframing “why can’t they just stop?” through a medical lens, emphasizing addiction as stress, attachment, and reward dysregulation rather than a simple substance problem. She explains how addict...