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
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
Melissa Deally:those little moments in time that you take for yourself, that
Melissa Deally:you could take several times a day, and as you build a little
Melissa Deally: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.