Take Charge of Your Health – Lucy McBride MD

What does it really mean to take charge of your health? Lucy McBride MD, believes it involves much more than tracking your numbers. Good health is also about understanding the less measurable parts: what’s happening in your life, your relationships, stress, habits, emotional patterns, and your history. Dr. Lucy McBride, a primary care physician and author of Beyond the Prescription: A Doctor’s Guide to Taking Charge of Your Health, joins us to discuss how to become a more informed, proactive annd empowered partner in your own healthcare. We discuss the difference between control and agency, why your bio contains important health data, the “patient personality” each of us brings into the doctor’s office, when health tracking helps (and when it doesn’t) and why the transition to retirement can make structure, movement, social connection, and daily routines even more important. Lucy McBride, MD joins us from Washington DC. _________________________ Bio Dr. Lucy McBride is a board-certified internist who has practiced primary care medicine in Washington, DC, for over two decades. She is a native Washingtonian who attended the National Cathedral School before earning her undergraduate degree from Princeton University. She graduated with honors from Harvard Medical School and earned a Master’s Degree in Pharmacology as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Cambridge, U.K. She completed her internship and residency in Internal Medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Dr. McBride has become a nationally recognized voice in healthcare transformation and patient empowerment. She believes that health is not a checklist or an outcome, but rather a lifelong process that requires awareness, acceptance, and agency over what you can change. She is the author of Beyond the Prescription: A Doctor’s Guide to Taking Charge of Your Health (Simon & Schuster, August 2026), which offers a five-step framework for patients to reclaim agency over their health. The book has been praised for bridging the gap between conventional medicine and holistic wellness, refusing false binaries and empowering patients to make informed decisions. She writes the widely-read medical newsletter Are You Okay?, which reaches over 39,000 subscribers weekly with evidence-based guidance on navigating mental and physical health in tandem. She also hosts the top-rated podcast Beyond the Prescription. Dr. McBride’s work has been published in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and USA Today. She is a frequent media commentator, appearing on NPR, CNN, MSNBC, Morning Joe, and PBS NewsHour, where she provides evidence-based medical advice and advocates for a more comprehensive approach to healthcare. Her mission extends beyond individual patient care to transforming the healthcare system itself. She believes that empowering individual patients creates systemic change—and that primary care relationships, enhanced by technology but centered on human connection, are the foundation of sustainable healthcare transformation. Dr. McBride lives in Washington, DC with her husband and three children. _______________________ For More on Lucy McBride  Beyond the Prescription: A Doctor’s Guide to Taking Charge of Your Health Beyond the Prescription Podcast You can learn more about Dr. McBride here. You can subscribe to her free newsletter here. _______________________ Other Retirement Podcasts You’ll Love  Eat Your Ice Cream – Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, PhD What Matters Most – Diane Button Inside The Healthcare Heist – Jordan Grumet, MD _______________________ Wise Quotes On Agency “People often don’t realize how much agency they have over their health…When we stop fighting unwinnable battles, we then open up brain space, time, energy to then fight the battles we want to be fighti