Stress is Optional: Integrating Lifestyle Medicine and Coaching with Dr. Robyn Tiger
In this episode of the Love and Science Podcast, Dr. Erica Bove sits down with Dr. Robyn Tiger, a double board-certified physician in diagnostic radiology and lifestyle medicine, trauma-informed mind-body expert, and founder of Stress-Free MD.
Dr. Robyn shares her powerful personal journey through chronic, unexplained physical symptoms that ultimately stemmed from severe chronic stress — and how discovering yoga, meditation, and lifestyle medicine quite literally saved her health and her life.
Together, Dr. Erica and Dr. Robyn explore what it truly means to integrate science, medicine, and whole-person care, especially for women navigating high-stress medical careers, fertility journeys, and life transitions.
This conversation is grounded, compassionate, and deeply practical, offering both hope and actionable tools for healing.
How Dr. Robyn reclaimed her health and life after years of unexplained symptoms, beginning with yoga and nervous system regulation.
We discuss:
Her unexpected pregnancy complicated by a fetal anomaly, the grief that followed, and how she found the courage to move forward
Why chronic stress is often the missing diagnosis in modern medicine
Evidence-based stress reduction techniques that actually work
How lifestyle medicine, trauma-informed care, and coaching can be integrated for true whole-person healing
Guest Details:
Robyn Tiger, MD, DipABLM is a double board-certified physician in
Diagnostic Radiology and Lifestyle Medicine and a trauma informed
mind-body expert. As founder of StressFreeMD, she uniquely
combines her trainings in medicine, yoga therapy, meditation & life
coaching to teach physicians a whole person approach to relieve stress
while increasing both lifespan and healthspan. Her innovative
coaching, courses, presentations, retreats, podcast and book focus on
creating effective behavior changes in the key topics of stress relief,
nutrition, exercise, sleep, social connection and nature while
cultivating physical, mental, and emotional well-being and resilience.
As always, please keep in mind that this is my perspective and nothing in this podcast is medical advice.
If you found this conversation valuable, book a consult call with me using this link:
https://calendly.com/loveandsciencefertility/discovery-call
Also, be sure to check out our website: loveandsciencefertility.com
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Please don’t let infertility have the final word. We are here to take the burden from you so that you can achieve your goal of building your family with confidence and compassion. I’m rooting for you always.
In Gratitude,
Dr. Erica Bove
Transcript:
Hello, my loves, and welcome back to the Love and Science podcast. I am so deeply honored to have Dr. Robin Tiger with us today. She is a friend and a colleague and an absolutely amazing human. Let me introduce her to do do her credentials justice. So Dr. Robin Tiger is a double board certified physician in diagnostic radiology and lifestyle medicine. And she's also a trauma-informed mind-body expert. You know, we love this at Love & Science. She is also the founder of Stress-Free MD, where she uniquely combines her trainings in medicine, yoga therapy, meditation, and life coaching to teach physicians a whole person approach to relieve stress while increasing both lifespan and health span. I learned this new word, "health span" recently. I'm a big fan.
Her innovative coaching courses, presentations, retreats, podcasts, and book focus on creating effective behavior change in the key topics of stress relief, nutrition, exercise, sleep, social connection, and nature while cultivating physical, mental, and emotional well-being and resilience.
Dr. Robyn, it is so fabulous to have you. Thank you for being a guest.
Thank you for having me, Dr. Erica. I’m so happy to be here today.
I know. And you know, I am just so inspired by your journey. I do believe, like your book, right? Stress is optional. I really do believe that. And I think that when we start to understand an integrated approach like you’ve created, I actually think we can start to realize how that pathway is possible.
It’s multimodal. It takes somebody like you, a guru who really has walked the walk yourself. But I think even something as complex as the fertility journey, we can start to dismantle it, understand the sources of stress, and start to feel better along the way.
I’d love to talk about some of your ideas in just a few minutes. How does that sound?
Sounds amazing. Let’s do it.
Okay, let’s do it.
So first of all, I would love to understand your journey as a physician and a coach. Tell us a little bit about how you got to where you are today with your practice.
Yeah. So many years ago, and it might be about fifteen to twenty years at this point, I was setting the stage. I was married to an amazing man, still am, had two young children, was working as a radiologist in a busy practice, and was very involved in my community, very involved in the hospital, very involved in all the things.
I noticed that I started developing a lot of symptoms — symptoms that seemed really disconnected at the time. From the top down, they included migraine headaches with intractable vomiting, which I’d never experienced before, tinnitus, vertigo, bleeding gums. As a physician, you’re trying to connect the dots. What does that have to do with anything?
My body hurt. I felt like the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz, like I needed oil just to move. I couldn’t digest my food. No matter what I ate, my abdomen would distend. I had pain. My bowel habits were all over the place — constipation, diarrhea. I had really bad reflux, chest pain, burning reflux, questioning whether it was cardiac or gastrointestinal.
A particularly scary symptom was intermittent paresthesias. I would lose sensation in my hands, feet, and the left side of my back. My hands terrified me. I’d be driving and couldn’t feel the steering wheel. I’d be cutting vegetables and couldn’t feel the knife. I’d be doing a breast biopsy and couldn’t feel the biopsy gun.
I started seeing many colleagues — neurologists, gastroenterologists, physical therapists, occupational therapists, acupuncture, massage — after seeing my internist initially. I wasn’t getting better. I had a pile of pills and was feeling worse.
It got really scary. I began thinking thoughts like, “I can’t wake up and do another day like this.” Not planning anything, but just feeling that level of suffering. Labs were normal. Imaging was normal. Nothing was showing up.
Along the way, I lost three physician friends to suicide — one from college, one from medical school, and one from my practice. That changed everything.
I had a vision of a road with a fork in it. One path was where I was heading, and I knew I didn’t want to go there. I was also seeing a mental health professional, but it wasn’t helping.
Western medicine is incredible, but I had to look outside the box. I started hearing about yoga and meditation — things I used to roll my eyes at. I was a gym rat. Yoga wasn’t exercise to me.
But I kept seeing an advertisement for a Yoga 101 series. It was taught by an anthropology professor who owned the studio, which appealed to my left brain. I was at rock bottom, so I signed up.
I remember that evening clearly. I worked all day, came home exhausted, fed my kids, bathed them, handed them to my husband, and drove to a 7:30 p.m. class rolling my eyes, thinking of all the things I could be doing instead.
After that very first session, I wasn’t tired. I felt calm. My mind was clear. My body didn’t hurt. I didn’t know what happened.
That was the beginning of seeing another path.
I researched the medical literature. As I continued practicing and feeling better, my symptoms eventually went away. I realized the diagnosis no one had made was severe chronic stress.
By regulating my nervous system and restoring homeostasis, I decreased inflammation and healed.
I went into yoga teacher training not because I wanted to teach, but because I wanted to understand what was making me feel better. That’s where I learned about yoga therapy, which is very different from yoga teacher training. Yoga therapy is at least one thousand hours over three years and is designed to help people with symptoms, illness, and disease.
I learned how it could help people with stress, cancer, MS, trauma, veterans, and so many others. It allowed me to doctor in a different way.
During that training, I learned about meditation, specifically a trauma-informed meditation called iRest, originally created for the military. It was secular, evidence-based, and profoundly helpful. I spent another three years becoming certified in that modality.
As I worked more deeply with the body, I realized how much my thoughts also mattered. I worked with a coach and then became certified as a life coach myself, integrating the mind and body together.
Along that path, I learned about lifestyle medicine after moving to Asheville, North Carolina. I met physicians who were board-certified in lifestyle medicine, a real specialty focused on behaviors that prevent, reverse, and sometimes treat disease.
These behaviors include stress management, nutrition, movement, sleep, and social connection. I felt like I had come home.
I was invited to join the lifestyle medicine faculty and co-author the stress section of their board review manual. That was my formal entry into the field.
I want to share a bit about my fertility journey as well.
From the outside, people often see the beautiful family without knowing the struggles in between. I have two healthy children, but there was a pregnancy loss in between.
I conceived my first child easily after waiting to pass my boards. At the time, results came by mail. A thin envelope meant you passed. When that letter arrived, my husband said it was time to start a family. I got pregnant right away.
I became pregnant again soon after. I was very sick, vomiting constantly, and assumed it was similar to my first pregnancy. My best friend, a high-risk OB, was doing a research study and asked me to check fetal measurements.
One Sunday evening, my husband, toddler, and I went into the radiology office. I performed the ultrasound myself and immediately saw a large cystic structure at the base of the fetus’s skull. I knew exactly what it was — an occipital encephalocele, a neural tube defect incompatible with life.
The next day, this was confirmed. I was scheduled for a D&E, but the procedure was canceled due to religious objections, despite being at a secular hospital. I was eventually transferred and underwent the procedure with the support of an incredible maternal-fetal medicine physician.
There was deep grief, trauma, and stress.
We wanted another child. When we were cleared to try again, I was terrified but chose to move forward. I relied on science, probabilities, and support. I had extensive monitoring and ultrasounds. Thankfully, I went on to have a healthy pregnancy and welcomed our daughter.
I share this because people on fertility journeys are not alone. Sometimes there is a “sandwich pregnancy.” It does not mean it cannot work again.
There was shame, blame, and questioning whether I had done something wrong. All labs were normal. It was not my fault.
What I know now is that calming the body first is essential. Chronic stress drives disease. Nervous system regulation must come before thought work.
Food affects mood. Sleep is medicine. Community is medicine.
Instead of asking “Why can’t I?” I learned to ask “How can I?”
When you face the worst fear and realize you survived it, it becomes empowering. The only way to truly fail is to not try.
For anyone listening, choose one small step. Aim to be one percent better each day.
You can find me at www.stressfreemd.net, where you’ll find my podcast, book Feeling Stress Is Optional, coaching programs, and retreats.
Okay, my friends. Be well. You are so deeply loved. Until next time.
