What A Lab Accident Can Teach Us About Food, Stress, & The Heart

What if one of the most powerful ingredients for heart health isn’t something you eat, but something you feel?

Questions like that are what inspired this new podcast series, and they’re why I wanted to begin with a study that still surprises scientists and clinicians more than 40 years later. It involves rabbits, a diet designed to cause heart disease, and a variable no one thought to measure: affection.

This series was born out of a simple belief. Health research is often reduced to headlines, rules, and rigid takeaways. But when you slow down and really examine a single study—its context, its assumptions, and its blind spots—you often uncover insights that change how you live, not just what you know. 

Each episode of this podcast does exactly that: one study at a time, deeply explored, carefully translated, and connected back to everyday life.

In 1980, researchers at the University of Kentucky1 were studying atherosclerosis, the buildup of plaque in the arteries that leads to heart disease, still the number one killer worldwide. Their animal model was rabbits, and the protocol was well established.

The rabbits were fed a high-cholesterol “heart attack diet,” one that had reliably produced arterial plaque in countless experiments before. The expectation was simple: all the rabbits would develop significant heart disease.

But when the scientists examined the arteries, something strange stood out.

At first, the researchers assumed an error. Maybe the diet wasn’t identical. Maybe cholesterol intake varied. Maybe there was a measurement issue.

But when they checked the data, everything matched. Cholesterol levels were the same. Blood pressure was the same. Heart rate was the same. On paper, these rabbits were biologically indistinguishable.

Yet their outcomes were not.

Eventually, they discovered something that had never been part of the protocol. The lab assistant assigned to one group of rabbits had been doing something extra.

She wasn’t just feeding them and cleaning their cages. She was holding them. Petting them. Talking to them. Offering consistent, gentle affection.

Here’s where this research stops being just fascinating and starts becoming personal. The rabbits weren’t simply eating cholesterol pellets in isolation. They were being fed while relaxed, safe, and cared for. Their nervous systems were in a fundamentally different state.

Now think about us.

How are you eating that piece of cake?

If you’re eating with stress, guilt, or shame—thinking “this is bad” or “I shouldn’t be doing this”—your body feels that threat. Cortisol rises. Digestion becomes less efficient. Blood sugar spikes higher. Inflammation increases. The emotional stress becomes part of the metabolic equation.

But if you’re eating that same slice of cake with joy—at a birthday, laughing with friends, savoring the moment—the physiology changes. The body shifts into a parasympathetic, rest-and-digest state. Hormones balance. Digestion improves. Blood sugar regulation steadies.

This doesn’t mean food quality doesn’t matter—it absolutely does. But the rabbit study reminds us that nutrition isn’t just chemical. It’s contextual.

If rabbits on a heart-attack diet can be protected by affection, what does that say about us?

It means that hugs, touch, laughter, and presence at the table aren’t just emotional comforts. They are physiological interventions. Love and connection don’t just feel good; they measurably protect the heart.

That’s why we chose this study to launch the podcast. It perfectly captures the spirit of this series: respecting the science while expanding the conversation beyond rules, fear, and reductionism.

In the full episode, we go deeper into the nervous system, digestion, and what this research means for daily life, not just for what you eat, but how you live.

So here’s my challenge to you this week: notice how you feel when you eat. Drop the guilt. Drop the shame. See what happens when you replace it with presence, gratitude, and connection.