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Published on:

4th Jul 2025

HH567: Encore Presentation-Stress: Impacts Your Digestive System

Today, I want to talk about how stress impacts digestion.

About the Host:

Melissa is an Integrative Health Practitioner and a Board Designated Trainer of NLP, Time Line Therapy®, Hypnotherarpy, and NLP Results Coaching, helping people get to the root cause of their health issues and then get lasting results. Melissa neither diagnoses nor cures but helps bring your body back into balance by helping discover your “toxic load” and then removing the toxins. Melissa offers functional medicine lab testing that helps you “see inside” to know exactly what is going on, and then provides a personalized wellness protocol using natural herbs and supplements.  Melissa’s business is 100% virtual – the lab tests are mailed directly to your home and she specializes in holding your hand and guiding the way to healing so that you don’t have to figure it all out on your own.

Melissa has launched Amplify Impact Academy, with business partner, Billie Aadmi and together they train other coaches, practitioners and counsellors in the 4 mind-body healing modalities mentioned above, giving them powerful tools to use with clients to get results with greater ease, speed and grace. These courses teach life skills and anyone can take them, if you wanto be a better leader, parent, partner, be empowered in your own life, these courses are for you!

Melissa’s passion project is her non-profit, Girls Matter (www.girlsmatter.ca), breaking the poverty cycle 1 girl, 1 family, 1 village at a time.  The mission is to keep girls in school and stop teenage marriages, because school isn’t free in over 50 countries around the world and when parents have to make the difficult choices of feeding their kids or paying for school, food wins. And when the girls hit their teen years, they will often be married off so that someone else becomes responsible to feed them. Keeping girls in school instead creates a generational ripple effect, because an educated girl is more than twice as likely to ensure her on children are educated. Educating girls also grows the GDP of countries, when they get into the workforce. This is how together, we can change the world. Guests on this podcast are invited to donate to this important cause. Learn more here in this short video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1R3-xqzJLZW14om1PhFClcU_oRSZ8zgip/view?usp=share_link

Melissa is the winner of the 2024 Women in Podcasting Awards in the “inspiration & motivation” category and the 2021 & 2022 Quality Care Award by Business From The Heart and is also the recipient of the Alignable “Local Business Person of the Year “Award 2022, 2023 & 2024 for Whistler.

Melissa has been featured at a number of Health & Wellness Summits, such as the Health, Wealth & Wisdom Summit, The Power To Profit Summit, The Feel Fan-freaking-tas-tic Summit, the Aim Higher Summit and many more!  She has also guested on over 90 different podcasts teaching people about the importance of prioritizing our health and how to get started.

 

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/yourguidedhealthjourney

 

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Transcript
Melissa Deally:

Welcome back to another episode of health hacks

Melissa Deally:

as I continue talking about stress and how it impacts

Melissa Deally:

various different systems in your body that you may not be

Melissa Deally:

aware of. And today, I want to talk about how stress impacts

Melissa Deally:

digestion. Because you see, with our autonomic nervous system,

Melissa Deally:

you can either be in your fight or flight state high alert

Melissa Deally:

because of chronic stress, or you can be in your rest and

Melissa Deally:

digest parasympathetic nervous system, and you can't be in both

Melissa Deally:

at the same time. So if you're in that high alert sympathetic

Melissa Deally:

nervous system, your body is focused on getting you to

Melissa Deally:

safety. It is therefore actually shutting down your digestive

Melissa Deally:

system and your immune system, as well as other systems in the

Melissa Deally:

body, in order to be able to give you the energy you need in

Melissa Deally:

order to get to safety, to be able to produce the adrenaline,

Melissa Deally:

the cortisol, etc, so that you can get to safety, and in that

Melissa Deally:

moment, your body is not making salivary enzymes and other

Melissa Deally:

digestive enzymes. There's no stomach acid being made in order

Melissa Deally:

for your body to be able to break down your food. So if you

Melissa Deally:

are eating in a state of chronic stress, that that sympathetic

Melissa Deally:

nervous system, that fight or flight state and putting food

Melissa Deally:

into your body, your body cannot properly digest it, and that

Melissa Deally:

just causes problems down the line throughout your digestive

Melissa Deally:

system, because the food stays in there too long, it starts to

Melissa Deally:

putrefy, which nobody wants. And over the course of time, if we

Melissa Deally:

do this on a regular basis, it has all sorts of negative health

Melissa Deally:

effects, in the sense that, because the food isn't being

Melissa Deally:

broken down properly, you're not feeling satiated. This the

Melissa Deally:

goodness of the food is not getting to the cells that need

Melissa Deally:

it, so you're not getting the energy that you need. Because

Melissa Deally:

you're not satiated, you're going to eat more often. That

Melissa Deally:

leads to weight gain. It can also lead to diarrhea and

Melissa Deally:

constipation, because the bo The food's not being broken down

Melissa Deally:

properly, and your your body can't use it and excrete it

Melissa Deally:

properly, and it triggers all of these issues. And so that's

Melissa Deally:

something that I really want you to be aware of, because we don't

Melissa Deally:

often necessarily connect how stress is impacting our body's

Melissa Deally:

ability to properly digest our food. Now I want to leave you

Melissa Deally:

with something that you can do in order to support that stress

Melissa Deally:

level, and that is to meditate. And there may be people that are

Melissa Deally:

like, I can't meditate, and I want to invite you to think of

Melissa Deally:

meditating as just sitting quietly for a few minutes. This

Melissa Deally:

doesn't have to be a massive hour long or even a half hour

Melissa Deally:

long meditation, if you can just start with the baby steps of

Melissa Deally:

sitting quietly. Maybe it's outside in your garden, closing

Melissa Deally:

your eyes and just listening to the sounds that are happening

Melissa Deally:

around you and just focus on that, nothing else. And you

Melissa Deally:

know, if your mind starts running. Just be aware of that

Melissa Deally:

and say, okay, mind, this is my moment to calm and just ask

Melissa Deally:

those thoughts to go away as you tune back in to the sounds that

Melissa Deally:

are around you, or you might like to tune into the feeling

Melissa Deally:

around you. It might be the soft breeze on your skin and on your

Melissa Deally:

face. It might be the sun on your face. There's many ways to

Melissa Deally:

meditate. It doesn't have to be sitting on a meditation mat and

Melissa Deally:

tuning into something you know to your own inner self for 30

Melissa Deally:

minutes or an hour or four hours. Start off small, and as

Melissa Deally:

you start off small, you're going to notice you you enjoy

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those little moments in time that you take for yourself, that

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you could take several times a day, and as you build a little

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habit around that, maybe you do it before each meal, so that

Melissa Deally:

that calms your nervous system and then allows you to be eating

Melissa Deally:

when your rest and digest state is turned on, and Your body can

Melissa Deally:

actually be producing your salivary enzymes, your stomach

Melissa Deally:

acid, and all of the other enzymes needed to break down

Melissa Deally:

your food as it travels through your entire digestive system. So

Melissa Deally:

I hope that's helpful for you, and I just want to wish you

Melissa Deally:

happy digesting, because it is such a critical part in your

Melissa Deally:

overall health.

Show artwork for Don't Wait For Your Wake Up Call!

About the Podcast

Don't Wait For Your Wake Up Call!
with Melissa Deally, Integrative Health Practitioner
As an Integrative Health Practitioner I have come to realize that we simply haven't been taught how to optimize our health, and that the average person has habits that are negatively impacting their health, due to this lack of knowledge, through no fault of their own. Public health and our school system simply don't teach us enough about nutrition, sleep, stress, gut health or how interconnected our bodies are! Modern life has us more sleep deprived, stressed out and the sickest ever, and I believe it is time to bring this education to you, so that you CAN be empowered in your health and you can then make the right choices for you and your family. The choices you make today impact your future 1 year, 5 years, 10 years + from now. It is never too early to start looking after your health, as Health is your TRUE wealth....without it what do you have?

I use this podcast to support my passion project - non-profit, Girls Matter (www.girlsmatter.ca), breaking the poverty cycle 1 girl, 1 family, 1 village at a time. The mission is to keep girls in school and stop teenage marriages, because school isn’t free in over 50 countries around the world and when parents have to make the difficult choices of feeding their kids or paying for school, food wins. And when the girls hit their teen years, they will often be married off so that someone else becomes responsible to feed them. Keeping girls in school instead creates a generational ripple effect, because an educated girl is more than twice as likely to ensure her own children are educated. Educating girls also grows the GDP of countries, when they get into the workforce. This is how together, we can change the world. Guests on this podcast are invited to donate to this important cause. Listeners are invited to donate as well. Learn more here in this short video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1R3-xqzJLZW14om1PhFClcU_oRSZ8zgip/view?usp=share_link

About your host

Profile picture for Melissa Deally

Melissa Deally

Melissa is an Integrative Mind Body Health Practitioner helping people get to the root cause of their health issue. Melissa neither diagnoses nor cures, but helps bring your body back into balance by helping discover your “toxic load” and then removing the toxins. Melissa offers functional medicine lab testing that helps you “see inside” to know exactly what is going on, and then provides a personalized wellness protocol using natural herbs and supplements. Melissa’s business is 100% virtual – the lab tests are mailed directly to your home and she specializes in holding your hand and guiding the way to healing, so that you don’t have to figure it all out on your own.