Welcome to The Feel Good Life! Start Here

About this newsletter, where to start, Green Prescriptions, and a free Stress-Buster course for you. Plus the bigger purpose behind this all: The Feel Good Foundation.

Welcome to The Feel Good Life! A newsletter about health, prevention, empathy, and hope. I’m Dr. Mariana M.D. and I’m here to teach you how to not go to the doctor. Get started by checking my easy, medically-guided course on managing stress and daily habits, right here.

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Ok, here we go!

‘It’s time.’

That’s the phrase written on an image I had created seven years ago. One which Facebook reminded me of just this past week as I sat down to plan the soft launch of this newsletter, The Feel Good Life.

It’s been around eight years in the making, brewing slowly, one experiment after the next, with some rests in between to recover, reassess and build new plans.

And now here we are! It seems to me that the rise of Substack (here’s an explainer) has been a godsend to independent writers like me. Let’s face it: creating work is not easy. It takes us to our deepest place, to find our core message that will speak through us. And this is rarely a quick process. It can take days, months, even years of deep emotional dives, a lot of consistency, a ton of hard work, and a willingness to show up up for our craft until the magic happens.

With all this said, I’m calmly and happily (if cautiously) choosing to take this big step and draw from my creative well in a new way. This time, it feels different. Is it maturity? Wisdom? Fear? Probably a bit of all three. But what’s certain about this one time is that everything feels. Just. Right.

And that’s when you just know - it’s time.

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‘So Mariana, What’s This Newsletter About?’

Mainly about health. But not in a complex, over-technical way.

It will be about all things health, physical and emotional; about life and all its elaborate and beautiful range of feelings. It will be about prevention and the ways in which you can understand your entire self better. And also about empathy and hope - two of the most impactful values for patients, yet also somehow the most disregarded by medical practices at times.

After working in Palliative Care with geriatric and chronic pain patients for most of my career, I quickly learned how dealing with emotions are an undervalued or even a discriminated against side of medicine. A side of the job that we are poorly trained for or taught about, both as patients or as healthcare staff. Talking about feelings makes many people uncomfortable. There is so much taboo around speaking about your feelings and this has to change. I want to believe that now, more than ever, we’re ready to cut through this toxic trait as a society, and to allow feelings to become part of our daily lives as early as possible.

It might seem idealised but it’s already happening. There are incredible people already having these conversations and showing up for this amazing, much needed work, such as:

• Dr. Paul
  at Men’s Psychology

• A Midwestern Doctor
  of The Forgotten Side of Medicine

• Michael Easter
  of 2% With Michael Easter

• Winston
  of Coffee Times

• Jeremy Faust, MD
  of Inside Medicine

• Katelyn Jetelina
  of
  Your Local Epidemiologist

• Amy Walsh
  of
  The Nettle Witch, MD

• Chris Anselmo
  of
  Hello, Adversity

• Dr Julia Grace Patterson💙
  of Call to Action

• Dr. Jake Goodman

• Dr. Vicki Chan Kim

• Dr. Laura Vater

I’m here ready to join them and do my part - by giving in the way of my writing - this newsletter.

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Who Is This For?

Over the last 16 years working as a physician, I’ve frequently experienced burnout firsthand - either in myself or my colleagues. I’ve seen the damage it can do and I’ve seen the toll it can take, not just on healthcare professionals but on everyone they treat.

For that reason, I want this newsletter to be fully inclusive. It will be for anyone wanting to improve their personal health and feel more hopeful about their wellbeing - but also, I want to help all my incredibly hardworking, utterly exhausted healthcare colleagues out there in the world who won’t receive the support they deserve from overworked, under-funded systems that are close to collapse.

This is for anyone who's looking for awareness and empathy in health, for a safe space to learn from, to be heard and feel seen, for a place where medical doesn't mean boring, troubling or puzzling.

This is for anyone who's tired of the healthcare system - whether patients or professionals - unsure where to turn to for health guidance and support, and ready to embrace a self-care journey, while surrounded by the right community.

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How Will It Work?

I will be writing pieces regularly, which will go out somewhere between weekly and biweekly while I get the hang of this terrific newslettering-on-Substack thing. Still on it.

All main content will be free. I truly believe in good health as a universal right and I want to abide by it.

Paid subscribers however will get some extra content, which will include expert interviews, Q&A group calls, community activities, and a few more along the way.

Both free and paid tiers will be helping me build this ambitious vision that has been brewing inside me since 2015. It’s time!

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Where To Start?

Here are some useful guides to get you started. As I said, I want health, medicine (and life) to be easy for you:

• The Sleep Guide

• The Men’s Health Guide

More of these easy health guides will be coming to this space as we go.

I’ll also be recommending great people to follow, useful articles and wise advice I find here and elsewhere on the web. These are links that have helped me understand health and life-related topics in much deeper ways. I’ll keep growing and updating this Resources section as I go.

And if you’re wondering ‘wait, who is this Mariana again?’, you can read the About section or check my Linkedin profile to learn more. :)

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Finally, two important things:

1. A Free Course to Help You Tackle Stress

I’ve made the first course for you! (The first of many I have planned). And it’s about stress.

Why? Because chronic, grinding stress has been normalised as a state of being we all have to endure and suffer from - and is often seen as a requirement for success in the modern world.

However, stress is about as far from trivial as it’s possible to get. 

It’s a health-wrecker. 

And it’s a bomb detonated in the middle of your future. 

So this course is all about disarming it, carefully and steadily, step by step.

There are 8 lessons in this course - all of them filled with easy, detailed and actionable learning. I will be delivering them weekly so that you can go through them in your own time - and after they’re all published, I’ll be announcing some exciting next steps for this whole topic.

You can access the course now! The first lesson is right here.

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2. Community: The Green Prescription Club

The Green Prescription Club is a space where we all connect around a Nature-based activity as prescribed by a healthcare provider (yours truly), encouraging positive lifestyle changes and wellbeing practices. This is a preventative public service, as a call to reinforce health and good lifestyle habits for all community members.

This is accessible to paid subscribers.

As your doctor, I’ll not only give you a prescription, but I’m also taking part in this journey with you every month.

In this club we will talk, share, create, and explore ideas once a month after accomplishing each month’s prescribed activity, over a Zoom group call.

This is really important. In The Green Prescription Club, you take control of your health goals while having a proper accountability group to support you. You can also take the mic in our monthly calls and bring up something valuable for everyone to discuss together, to create more awareness and empathy where it’s needed.

Are you ready to improve your lifestyle and take action?

Then Join The Green Prescription Club now! :)

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Oh, and I Have Big Plans For This Newsletter

In short: I’ll be building this newsletter into my full time job. After 16 years working as a GP (general practitioner, aka. Doctor), I’m ready to offer something bigger than I ever have before. I’m still learning how to build a successful routine for myself in this whole being self-employed thing (any advice is welcome!), but the more time I experience it, the more I’m convinced this is what I want. So much great work to do!

Going forward in this Feel Good space, you can expect to see:

• Courses

• Q&A Sessions

• Interviews

• Personal Essays

• 1:1 Consultations* (This is so anyone who wants it can have access to more private and personalised health guidance.)

• And impromptu activities as we go

All this will help me help you, and I can’t wait to be there for you.

But also, your support will help me build a greater project to go further:

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The Feel Good Foundation

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A Costa Rican-based nonprofit aiming to create burnout prevention programs for healthcare workers around the world.

When burnout happens, it’s really difficult to offer empathy. So, by taking care of our healthcare workers, we will ensure a better quality attention to patients.

Call me crazy, but I would love to be the doctor teaching you how not to go to the doctor. The more health issues can be prevented, the better. Doctors shouldn’t just treat when you’re ill; they should also help you to stay healthy. And because the healthcare systems are struggling big time, we are only being able to provide a somehow rushed attention, and trust me, it pains us.

That’s why I want to do something about it.

I’ve had my own share of mental health issues as a doctor, and because burnout changed the direction of my career, I want to step up and do my part for every student, intern, resident and colleague who might be hurting silently from the claws of burnout at any point of their professional lives. Not only doctors but every healthcare staff going through the same.

Help me build this larger vision.

By joining as a subscriber, you’ll be contributing to develop this larger cause for the benefit of all.

I aim to keep this newsletter free. In case you want to help me further by choosing a paid subscription, you’d be allowing me to keep this newsletter free for everyone to learn from. Health is our universal right and everyone deserves access to it one way or another.

Thank you so much!

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And That’s A Wrap!

I’m thrilled to have you reading this and I hope that you’ll follow along. I want this newsletter not only to be useful but also inspiring, making you want to make the changes that I know will improve your life in so many ways.

So, with much joy and a green light, let’s go!

See you next time,
Dr. Mariana

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Image credits: Pixabay