Everyday you make thousands of decisions that affect your health. This includes deciding what to eat, whether to exercise or not, and how much sleep you get. Whether you know or not, you're bombarded with information that influences your decisions. Behavioural economics is a theory that tries to explain why people may make different decisions in different contexts even if those decisions aren't always in their best interest. In this episode we discuss what behavioural economics is, how human laziness leads to decisions we don't want and how you can make use of behavioural economics to make healthy choices the easy choice.

It's estimated that 99% of the world breathes air that exceeds the recommended limits for pollution. Air pollution increases your chances for heart and other disease. But it's not just air pollution that's a problem, noise pollution also can affect your heart. In this episode, we discuss the health risks of being exposed to pollution, how air and noise pollution affect your health and things you can do to reduce your pollution exposure.

Select references cited in this podcast:

Associations of outdoor fine particulate air pollution and cardiovascular disease in 157 436 individuals from 21 high-income, middle-income, and low-income countries (PURE): a prospective cohort study: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(20)30103-0/fulltext

Association between Noise and Cardiovascular Disease in a Nationwide U.S. Prospective Cohort Study of Women Followed from 1988 to 2018: https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/EHP12906

The impact of vegetative and solid roadway barriers on particulate matter concentration in urban settings: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0296885

The global weight loss industry will be worth $400 billion by 2030. And while most people who are trying to lose weight will say they're doing it for their health, your weight is not a good indicator of how healthy you are. In this episode we discuss how people started to equate weight with health, the role of excess body fat (and not weight) in health, what you need body fat for and when changes in weight are good and when they're not.

References cited in this podcast:

Canadian Adult Obesity Clinical Practice Guidelines: https://obesitycanada.ca/guidelines/

Weight Circumference and All-cause Mortality in a Large US Cohort: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/775594