If you know Parsley Health, you likely know it as the modern medical practice redefining what preventative and integrative care can look like. But behind the brand is Dr. Robin Berzin, a physician, entrepreneur, and mother who has spent her career asking a simple but uncomfortable question: why do so many people look “healthy” on paper while feeling anything but in their bodies?
Trained at Columbia and Mount Sinai, Dr. Berzin founded Parsley Health after seeing the same pattern repeat itself. Patients doing everything right yet still exhausted, inflamed, anxious, or stuck. Labs that looked normal on paper but missed the bigger picture. Parsley was built as an answer to that gap, offering more time, deeper data, and a root cause approach that treats the body as an interconnected whole.
In this edition of Living Well, Dr. Berzin shares what she is seeing most in patients right now, why high functioning people so often feel unwell, and the non-negotiables she personally protects to support energy, resilience, and long term health.
Check out our recent Living Well conversations with Molly Sims and Summer Fridays co-founders Lauren Ireland and Marianna Hewitt, plus more interviews from the series exploring how leaders actually take care of their health.
Living Well with Dr. Robin Berzin
For people who may know Parsley Health but not your personal story, what moment made you realize the current healthcare model wasn’t working and that you needed to build something different? I kept seeing the same pattern. People were doing everything “right,” their labs were technically “normal,” and yet they felt awful. Exhausted, inflamed, anxious, gaining weight, stuck. The traditional healthcare model didn’t have a lane for them because it’s built for short visits and late stage diagnoses, not prevention or root cause problem solving. I didn’t want patients dismissed as “the worried well” when their bodies were clearly signaling something was wrong.
Parsley was my response. Give people time, deeper data, and a connected plan so we can intervene earlier and help them feel well again, stay well, and know that they always have a medical care team in their corner.
How do you explain Parsley Health to someone who’s never experienced functional or preventative care before? I describe Parsley as preventative and integrative care that bridges the gap between conventional medicine and functional medicine. We help people understand why they feel the way they do and what to do about it, whether they’re trying to prevent future disease or they’ve already seen multiple specialists and still don’t have answers.
We look at the body as an interconnected system and focus on the drivers that shape long term health, such as metabolism, inflammation, hormones, nutrients, cardiovascular risk, and gut health. That systems based, root cause approach is what allows us to be helpful both early on and when someone feels like they’ve run out of options.
Some people come to Parsley before anything is “wrong.” Others come to us as a last resort, when everything looks normal on paper but they still don’t feel well. Our role is to connect the dots across systems, bring clarity where there’s been confusion, and create a personalized plan for someone’s long term health.
You talk often about burnout as a biological issue. What are you seeing most consistently in patients right now? Burnout shows up as a full body physiological shift, not just “stress.” I see disrupted sleep, blood sugar swings, anxiety, inflammation, stubborn weight changes, and fatigue that doesn’t match someone’s life on paper.
Many people think burnout is a mindset issue. Clinically, it’s actually a biological issue where the body is stuck in a chronic stress response. When we treat burnout as physiology, people don’t just cope better. They actually recover.
Why do you think so many high functioning people look healthy on paper but don’t feel well in their bodies? Because “normal” isn’t the same as optimal or resilient. Many high performers are metabolically inflexible without realizing it. Their energy crashes after meals, they rely on caffeine to function, and workouts feel harder than they should.
Clinically, I see people sitting in early insulin resistance for years before it ever becomes a diagnosis. Over one in three Americans already has prediabetes, many without knowing it. That’s how you can look fine on paper while your metabolism is quietly struggling. The body gives signals long before it gives diagnoses.
What do you think mainstream conversations about health and wellness still get wrong? We treat health like a collection of biohacks or tips and tricks instead of a long term practice. People tend to gravitate toward the shortcut, the supplement, the gadget, but the biggest levers are boring yet powerful. Sleep, stress management, nutrition, and exercise.
There’s increasingly a lot of data and AI assisted noise about your health that you can easily access now. The next step that actually makes a difference is working with an experienced clinician who helps you make sense of it all and understand how it applies to your health.
If someone feels “fine” but not great, what’s your advice for what to pay attention to first? I start with the signals people normalize too quickly. Inconsistent sleep, unstable energy, and digestion issues. Afternoon crashes, feeling “hangry,” or needing caffeine just to function are early signs your metabolism and nervous system are under strain.
Clinical intervention in that “fine but not great” phase is very powerful because smart diagnosis and small changes can make a huge impact. Don’t wait until you’re truly sick to take your health seriously.
Women make up a large part of Parsley’s patient base. Why do you think more women are drawn to this model of care? Women are tired of being told their symptoms are “normal” or dismissed altogether. Hormonal transitions affect everything from metabolism to mood, sleep, inflammation, bone, and muscle, yet primary care doctors don’t usually offer a real plan for hormone support.
Women are also often the health CEOs of their families, and they’re usually the first to sense when something is off. This model gives women time, data, context, validation, and a strategy that matches what’s actually happening in their bodies.
If you had to simplify longevity and aging well to a few non negotiables, what would they be? Muscle. Metabolic health. Sleep consistency.
If you protect those three, you protect healthspan. Muscle is your metabolic engine and one of the strongest predictors of aging well. Metabolic health shapes everything from brain function to cardiovascular risk. Sleep consistency is one of the fastest levers we have for recovery, inflammation, and resilience.
The post Living Well with Dr. Robin Berzin, Founder & CEO of Parsley Health: On Closing the Gap Between Looking Healthy and Feeling Well appeared first on The Chalkboard Mag.