SHOWNOTES
I invited Christa Biegler to talk to us about stress and how to combat it. She breaks down the science behind the way our body reacts so we can better understand what to do.
She explains that there are good and bad types of stress. Like so many things in life, the first step is acknowledging it and how it shows up. Changes in appetite and my (not normal) craving for sugar is not my fault. Seriously, Christa said so.
Other things that can show up:
Random body aches (it’s not just from sitting all the time)
Headaches
Brain fog and forgetfulness (like looking for the glasses that are on my head)
Changes in sleep cycles or insomnia (she shared tons of info on the best way to get to sleep easily and the ability to wake up refreshed)
She breaks down what happens in our bodies when we’re under (significant or unusual) stress and what will help.
Cortisol: it’s not always bad and she shares a great strategy to help you wake up feeling great (I’m trying this!)
4 Easy to change habits that will lead to better sleep
How to recognize the emotional impacts of stress (it’s not always what you think)
Christa walked me through 2 practices to increase our stress resilience. 2 or 3 minutes a day for a week can bring you moments of zen. Anyone can do these. Your body will thank you (and so will the other people in your house!)
We also talk about immunity. With a global pandemic it’s never been more important to understand what impacts our immune system. Christa addresses 7 specific things you can do to help support your immunity.
She gives a final piece of advice; start with the easiest piece first. Stress is part of life, but it doesn’t have to wreck your health or your peace of mind.
RESOURCES
TRANSCRIPT
00:03 (Gary Vee)Hey guys, it's Gary Vaynerchuk and you're listening to the Front Row Entrepreneur Podcast with our girl, Jen.
Jen:
00:14 Our guest today is an award winning dietician, nutritionist, online educator and host of the less stressed life podcast. She specializes in helping health conscious high performance women overcome bloating, fatigue and food reactions. She's also the owner of eczemanutritionist.com and author of the eczema relief diet and cookbook. She helps listeners and clients with unique ways to improve the inflammation causing stressors. We inevitably have it life by sharing science that enlightens and inspires. Welcome Christa Biegler!
Christa:
00:50 Thanks Jen. I am really excited to talk about this topic that impacts everyone.
Jen:
00:56 Yeah, that is for sure. These are some seriously stressful days that we are in. And I'm interested in talking about this with you today. Specifically how as entrepreneurs, how can we handle this stress? I mean from an entrepreneurial standpoint, like I think everybody's a little bit stressed to some degree, but as it relates to being a busy entrepreneur, I mean, I guess the first step is recognizing that we are stressed.
Read more...
Christa:
01:21 es, it really is. So actually that's, I want to start with recognition, um, in a couple ways because sometimes us high performance, these high-performance entrepreneurs, we kind of don't want to say that we have, like, we're like, yeah, sure. I mean we have stress, but where we don't acknowledge it or we don't see it in ourselves, right? Because also we've been doing it for so long, it's become a bit of a normal, which is challenging because when you have a new normal, you don't recognize things. So that's a little bit challenging. This conversation has nothing to do with finger-pointing anyone. And if we don't, you know, like, I always think this when I'm doing interviews, Oh, if I don't name this just right, no one would listen to it because it's like people are like, that doesn't apply to me. Right. But really it applies to everyone.
Christa:
02:07 It's no finger pointing. We all have stressors. They're perceived, they're real, they're physical. Like for example, sometimes people overexercise and under eat or vice versa, or they literally have other physical stressors like the structure of their chair. Like there's so many interesting, unique things that are probably popped up. Um, in people's lives from even just working at home and realizing, Oh, like I don't have this great workspace that maybe I do at work more opposite. Right? And so they accidentally are kind of falling into these slouchy positions. But anyway, environmental pieces, microbiome related, there's all kinds of good and bad stresses. So I want to, the first step is really recognition and then taking an assessment of where your stresses are coming from. Right? So I think that's the biggest thing and that's where it's so different right now. And the other piece of it is some of the stuff we can't, we have to focus only on what we can control, right?
Christa:
02:57 Because there's a lot of things that we can not control well. And so really kind of making that list and saying, okay, here's where I think my stresses are coming from. Which one of these can I control and not control? Because until we have that brain dump, I think with so many things, we go back to that brain dump. Like, okay, here's the facts and here's what we can do and here's what we can't do. And sometimes we don't know what we can do and that's okay to look for it because there's, and today I want to get into like, here's some other things to think about. I want to like say, Hey, here's some of the ways that this is possibly manifesting because when we think about stress, we might have a, we might have a preconceived notion about it. Like, Jen, what does stress mean to you? What does it feel like in your life? If you feel stressed? How do you feel
Jen:
03:38 putting you on the spot? Well, physically, um, and I'm not a person who gets headaches, but I have noticed a correlation that yeah, when I, when I'm stressed I have a headache and my appetite unfortunately increases. Like, like I eat bad things, uh, and too, too many bad things. Whereas I really am a person who likes to eat clean and I believe in that and I know how to do it. But if I'm feeling stressed I definitely will go. I will start rooting through the cabinets for like any kind of sugar.
Christa:
04:13 Totally, totally. I mean, and like most, a lot of us are like that. I don't know if we look at, um, you know, Dr. Bruce, he's kind of thought about, about as this asleep expert. Don't know if you've ever heard of him. He has a cool quiz called the sleep chronotypes and everyone's like a different animal, but most of us are bears. So we kind of just forage around and hybrid. I'm that person. I'm not that tiger like the other. And I don't even know what the other two animals are, but most of us are bears. So, um, but it feels different to different people. So when we recognize what it's like, so also, here's a thought, and this is not like, this is just doesn't happen all the time, but have you ever finished a project or do you remember back in school when you like work really hard and staff, I mean, entrepreneurs do this, right?
Christa:
05:01 We stay up late, we finish a project, whatever. We're like, I gotta meet this deadline and then someone, and then you get sick, right? It's like you were able to handle it until the end, until um, until the end. Then your body's like, Oh, by the way, I'm going to make you slow down. Now I'm gonna make you slow down. And that's the worst case scenario. But the really little things are that these are like annoying, chronic low grade things that make us feel this way. So the problem with entrepreneurship is that, um, you can't have these symptoms and perform as best as you can. So it might be brain fog. What was I supposed to be doing? What am I like, why did I walk to the next room? Trouble sleeping? And there's a lot of pieces there, right? Like there's a reason we sleep one third of the day.
Christa:
05:40 So any trouble with sleeping is like, Ooh, red flag, uh, random aches and pains. Just not having great energy or low energy. I'm floating random twitches. Just things that don't work for us. All of those things are a physiological, like domino effect of something that started the top. And remember, stresses are all types. So even though we're perceiving like, Hey, am I like emotionally stressed? It's really a lot of other things too, like physically, other pieces as well. Right. Nutritionally you kind of mentioned that a little bit. You're like, Oh well if I'm not really fueling right, it sort of just continues to go down the spiral a little bit. Right, so acknowledgement. I don't, I don't even remember the first question there, Jen. It was like, how do we, what do we do with it? It's first acknowledgement and first understanding what it feels like because I use I, I'm not like a strep.
Christa:
06:26 Well, I mean I've been talking about it for awhile so I'm not saying I'm some kind of like stress guru expert, but I have, I have, I have been talking about it for quite a while and, but the reason I started talking about it was because I was first talking about inflammation and people only listen to that if they know what it is. Right? But implemation is inherently protective. It's like, Oh, you stub your toe. We have an inflammation spot there. We're going to go heal and protect it. But it's this chronic longterm stuff that starts to slowly unravel. And the problem is if we can address this when it doesn't, it's not too bad, then we don't get to like bad situations, right? So we want to have awesome energy, we want to have great sleep, we want to like feel our best. We don't want to have brain fog, we just want to perform really well as entrepreneurs.
Christa:
07:13 And so recognizing little signs and symptoms early is our key to not totally unraveling and backstepping because I want to tell you what that feels like sometimes when people unravel and backs up and I can explain how this happens cause I think that is a lot. It's like really cool to understand how your body works. Is that okay if I talk about please, please. Yeah. So like exactly what happens in our body when our stress hormones are elevated. So there's a few different things that happen. So one of my favorite ways to talk about it is this one. So we all kind of know what cortisol is, right? It's the stress hormone everyone talks about. And so just to understand cortisol, we all have it. We should have it higher at certain times of the day and lower at certain times of the day. And actually let me just mention before I get into how um, different ways stress unravels our body.
Christa:
07:57 Let's talk about a really good time of the day when you want cortisol. So cortisol should rise a lot in the morning. So this is answering the question like how to help someone get out of bed, eat more easily, right? We want cortisol up in the morning and if you don't have good cortisol in the morning, you're going to have a hard time getting out of bed. This is called cortisol awakening response or car. So it's the first 30 minutes before when you get out of bed. So there's a really cool hack that's completely free to improve this thing. And usually I'll give people this assignment for a week and they're like, Oh, that really like does help. And the assignment is you've got to go look at some full spectrum light because this is called photo biomodulation. You get sunlight hitting your eyes and your skin and it starts to tell your body, Oh it is now this time we are going to prepare to create hormones and neurotransmitters and other things for the rest of the day.
Christa:
08:48 And by the way, we're going to start producing melatonin for tonight because I don't know if you know this, melatonin is actually a really cool antioxidant that does a bunch of things too, in addition to your sleeping hormone. So anyway, that's cortisol awakening response. So first thing, if you haven't tried again on a bed, you've got to improve it at that time. Cortisol and its own, it's only supposed to last about 90 minutes. So that means if you get a flat tire after work back when we used to drive to work, well some people, right? If you get that after work, you wanna be able to go to bed that night. So you don't want it to last too long. So we have to be kind of just knowing how this spikes and how aware we are of it is important. I remember talking to a client recently and she is a counselor and she was doing some other, she was like helping anyway, doesn't matter.
Christa:
09:31 But she was seeing her clients at night because that's what works for her. So she's telling me about how the poor sleep is, but then she lets me know that she finishes seeing clients at like eight nine o'clock. Well, you have to be super careful in certain professions, right? Because even as if, even if you're a business coach, sometimes we accidentally, we have, we have personality traits. We're an empath and we accidentally take on other people's stressors. So if we're doing that late at night and it, when we know cortisol now last 90 minutes, how long is it going to take you to go to bed? It's not going to happen very quickly, right? You're not going to feel like you can go to bed. So when we ramp ourselves up kind of late at night, which I know I've been guilty of a hundred percent I lived years like that, right?
Christa:
10:11 Um, we kind of have to, I want to talk about this so we understand what's actually happening in our body. So it's not like, Oh, okay cool, there's some science here and like if I'm going to do that, this is the ramification sort of type. So that was just a little bit about cortisol, but I didn't even get to the unraveling. Okay. So cortisol we think of as a stress hormone, but we need it in the morning to get going and maybe athletes need it before a race. I'm just pulling that out of completely nowhere. Okay. So there's a pattern, so in sit down in the afternoon and really low in the evening, that's normal. Okay. So back to that hack with the waking up, what was it? It was like exposing yourself to light and the first 30 day assignment, if you can go look at the sun in the first, and actually I'm so glad you brought this up because I missed an important piece.
Christa:
11:01 Um, so first of all, go look at the sun for like 60 to 90 seconds minimum. Now if you can do it for five minutes, you're doing a lot better. You're actually get allowing a lot more signaling to happen. So others, some other cool details about this is that the full spectrum light in the morning and people will be like, Oh, it's cloudy here. Actually it's fine. It'll work through the clouds. So you still get it through the clouds. I was just about to say we, this isn't gonna work for Cleveland, but you worked through the clouds. So, and we are in a season where it's like we have a lower barrier at the moment. However, people who are in like all the time dark or they're like, Oh you go to work before daylight or whatever, there are like $25 light boxes and I don't have to tell you a brand, you just go like search full spectrum light box and you look at the reviews and they were actually fun, fun fact and story.
Christa:
11:49 There's actually a cool alarm. There's different alarm clocks that will do this and they um, the way they wake you up is they simulate the sunrise. So they like slowly turn on with light. And so my um, one of my colleagues was telling me the other day, she's got a plant hanging near hers and she's like, this thing is like growing like crazy. The last two months since we started having this alarm clock. Anyway, I like stories, they help you remember things. So it's important to do that. Send the first, um, kind of like early in the day, ideally before like nine 30 or 10, which you know, most of us are up before nine 30 and 10 cause it's important for this first half hour, but the light kinda changes after that time. So anyway, so you want that full spectrum of, of all the lights at that time.
Christa:
12:28 So 60 to 90 seconds. So 60 to 90 seconds for five days is in the morning is like my initial challenge to you. But if you can do five minutes that would be better. So let's think about how you can actually do that. If we can attach it to like something we enjoy, like walking your dog, then it's easier to happen, right? So if we attach it to some other lifestyle habit that's already going on in our life, rather than like giving ourselves another thing to do. Although I would say it's an easy ask and we have 60 seconds in the morning to go look at the sun. Like that's like, that's a pot. Like I bet you won't feel worse after that typically. Right? And so I would say like I've never had people say, Oh, I feel worse after that experience. It just does not really happen.
Christa:
13:06 So that is getting are, it's helping the messaging that's happening to our body happened at the right times. So on that note, here's something important. If you look at your device, Oh my gosh, we're all guilty of this, right? When we wake up in the morning first or a computer screen before we see the sun, there's hacks for this. If we do that first before we look at the sun, it's now telling our body the photo biomodulation, which just means, Hey, the light hits my skin and my eyes and this is the message it sends because light has a lot to do with our health. It sends a message that is noon. So can you imagine if you're getting up at 6:00 AM but you go look at your device and you're like, Oh body, it's now noon. Like I bet how are you going to feel at 3:00 PM at that point, right?
Christa:
13:48 Like, so you're going to naturally like be slumped faster at that point. So if you want to look at your device and not have this problem, you can like Google how to turn your screen red like with a shortcut on it. And so if I wake up and I want to look at my phone, I'll just like hit my like three, like set aside three times and it will turn red because I had someone help me set it up, but I've seen the YouTube videos for it and it'll turn it red. And you'd be surprised, like if you're looking at your device before going to bed and if you need to look at something and actually look at the colors, not going to work. But, um, if you're just laying in bed and like looking at stuff, putting that red filter over it. So you're not getting into those blues, you'd be amazed at what that does for the eye strain that you don't even realize you're experiencing.
Christa:
14:34 I don't know about you guys, but my eyes are like one of my biggest concerns in my health because of my computer screen time and how I notice what has happened over time. And so I'm really interested in this because like not having great eyesight is really not awesome, right? So, um, so, so you don't even realize how much you're straining until you stop strain and you're like, Whoa, I feel so much better. So that's the tricky part. Sometimes it's really hard to assess or realize how you are if you don't know what it feels like to be better. Right? So those are some cool tricks for morning energy that builds up over time, right? Like we build up our current habits over time and yeah, my initial challenge to you is 60 to 90 seconds in the morning. Five minutes is more ideal, but do that for the week and see if you feel a touch better.
Christa:
15:19 I mean, it's one little thing, right? But it can make a difference. So that's one cool thing on how to like improve your cortisol curve cause some people are upside down so they can't get out of bed in the morning and then they're like Energizer bunny at night. And so they're kind of an upside down curve. Right. But they'd like to get out of bed in the morning. I bet people, most people would like to want to get out of bed in the morning. And so we call that an upside down curve and we can reverse that by knowing, understanding how cortisol works, improving its rise in the morning and not getting it so jacked up at night because we know it's going to last 90 minutes. Right. Cool.
Jen:
15:52 Yeah. And I don't think that, I mean, this particular issue is this isn't a problem for entrepreneurs. I don't think right now because I think most of us are still working, even if that means we just have to go to the computer and fight with the small business administration to get our PPP or like whatever it is people are having to do, they're still having to get up. But, um, my kid, uh, and we don't have to go down this path. I just thought I'd mention it as we're talking about sleep and cortisol and everything else, but both of my boys, but especially my 17 year old is his sleep schedule is so whack right now that he is like nocturnal and it's, you know, so it's like he's, he is asleep when we are awake and then he's up all through the night and then how do you fix it? You know, like you have to arrest it. So it's like we've been trying, he's been working on it and so like he was, he was able to stay up till seven o'clock last night and then otherwise he's been going to bed at, you know, waking up at 2:00 AM and then he's up all night. And anyway, so I maybe will, I'll get him a, like one of those lights and set it with Alexa and have it automated to go on.
Christa:
17:01 Yeah. Would totally help, I think. Um, and as a side note, just thinking about the entrepreneur, like all of us are now almost kind of entree. Like, we're trying to figure out how to work from home, uh, the majority of people, a lot of people, right? And so, and you're trying to homeschool to some extent. And so I'll see these memes where like it's the stages of whatever and people are like, Oh, this is gonna be so much fun. I mean they spend so much time together, like stage five is working while everyone else is asleep. And that is the challenge. It's like you added and there isn't really a perfect solution for this. It's not like I came here to solve that problem today because it's unrealistic. Let's just go ahead and add a whole nother job. Could you also be at kindergarten, second grade and freshman teacher please on top of your work?
Christa:
17:44 Like I don't even know that. Firstly, it's just I am trying to assess like, Oh my gosh, what's working and not working personally. Right. And yesterday I may have made myself a mixed drink at noon. It also did not help. Right. It's okay. It's okay. Like I'm not coming here. It's okay to be like this isn't real. I'm working. But I'm also, the other thing is like, uh, we're trying to figure out how we can make it work the best we can and that also I do still want to talk about the, the science that happens in our body when we have stress. But I wanted to mention one other thing. I think I did and I'm losing my train of thought there for a second one. I lost it. I'll bring it back in a little bit. Okay.
Jen: 18:24 You had mentioned the three lenses or that, but I dunno if, if, if this is, you know, a good segue into that.
Christa:
18:33 Yeah, we can talk about that. So
Jen:
18:35 is that part of identifying, like what, because you know, you had mentioned earlier that like recognition is one of the first steps, like recognizing that we do have stressors and you work specifically with high performance women most of the time. Do you think that that we high performance women are more likely to ignore it? Um, and if, if so like why are, why are we like,
Christa:
19:01 well, I think it's because it feels like a weakness, right? And I think this is a little bit about understanding ourself inside. So it's so funny cause I'll get people that are essentially exactly like me, like same profile like with a lot of health professionals that are entrepreneurs and I'll get them and they'll be saying, I think this isn't so bad or they're like justifying it and I'm like, you sound just like me. Like a few years ago before I, before I like was like okay, it's not really normal to be burping or to have um, like to be tired and to rely on coffee. I mean these are things that I think a lot of us could resonate with. And granted there's like a bunch of easy free cheap lifestyle things. It's just realizing like we don't have to kind of run on empty.
Christa:
19:44 We need to run with a really full cup. And so to talk about, you said the lenses. So I always think that there's a few lenses, there's always like multiple ways to kind of address a similar problem. And I always encourage people to look at a problem with some different lenses. So emotional is one lens, physical is another lens, nutritionals and other lens. So example, someone comes to me and they say, Oh, I'm having, I've noticed that I have this lower back pain and I'll say physically, even though this totally isn't my scope of like, Hey, by the way, structurally I'm like, Hey, by the way, if you're writing a little bit of a heel, it's creating a little bit of an arch in your back. And also like sitting, standing workplace stuff, which affects all of us. So that's a physical piece from the nutritional piece I'm looking at, Hey, do you have a bacterial imbalance that causes this one overgrowth of bacteria to sit in joint?
Christa:
20:32 Now that's probably not the best example cause it's just reserved in the lower back. But people are having kind of like random joint pain all over. I might say, Hey, maybe you have a little overgrowth of Prevotella, which is a type of bacteria that will settle into those joints and cause problems. And then from the emotional, Oh, I'm having some issues that are like, we can breeze through some of our pains. Um, which sounds a little weird, but there's like an emotional piece to all things which has a lot to do with like the stress unraveling or health, but so emotionally, sometimes people like hold pains, resentments, et cetera, and they like cold tension in their body, which sounds a little woo, but it's really not like we can all be a little bit looser and a little bit like our body like structure and how we're, how we're holding our emotions makes a difference.
Christa:
21:19 And so actually to pull it back to science, um, it's mostly we see this mostly by the way we breathe. And I will tell you a story. It's, um, if you want, because it helps. This is a kind of like an extreme situation. Last month, my last month, my mom was diagnosed with a pretty severe auto-immune crisis at the onset of this whole goofiness. So it's super fun. And, um, basically, uh, the body is attacking how the muscles work in the lungs and the esophagus. So how you swallow, so suddenly you can not swallow in and breathe. Very awesome. So we're kind of slowly recovering now and I'm trying to talk to her about breath work because if we breath, if we breathe. So let's actually like while I'm yapping about this, everyone put their hand one hand over their belly button and one hand over their heart.
Christa:
22:11 Just kind of pay attention without judgment to how you are breathe and how fast your heart is beating. Mine beats fast when I'm excited and I'm talking quickly and so I have to bring myself back down, right? Like that's, that's like a kind of a stress response. Like excitement is still a bit of a stress response and that's okay. It's a healthy one, right? But it still happens. It still matters. It still affects our physiology. So we're kind of listening and paying attention to how our breath is moving right now. Are we breathing out of our, like when you breathe, is your chest kind of coming up and down or does your belly go in and out? And so you're, you're going to observe that or assess it just like you would with other stressors without judgment of yourself first. And then I'm gonna talk to you about how you do it correctly and then I'll tie it back to the story.
Christa:
22:56 So we want to breathe diaphragmatically so out of our belly and now before you like shut this off. This is like the best free thing to fix your stress, but it takes some practice. This is how you create stress resilience. Like if you would practice some simple breathwork, which I'll walk you through right now for a few weeks, you would be shocked at the new level that you now are like, that is resilience. Like suddenly your kids are driving you less crazy. Suddenly other things are driving it like because you literally like there's some changes that are happening. I'll explain. So what you should do, so you got a hand over your belly button. You gotta hand over your heart. And what I'd like you to do now, so the, I'm going to tell you the answer and then I'm gonna walk you through it.
Christa: 23:45 You're going to inhale and you're, then you're going to exhale through your mouth. Inhale through your nose, exhale through your mouth. You can inhale your mouth and exhale through mouth as well. But the answer is you, as long as you exhale equal to or greater than you inhale, you're, you're rocking, you're awesome. So there's a few ways. There's a couple like quick ways to remember to do this. You can inhale three I am and then exhale all the way out. So like presses out your diaphragm at peace and you can count to six. So I'll count for you and you'll inhale two, three, I am XL, blow it all out loudly. Two, three or so like flexes your balance, like think about it in your head and then just blow it out. There's another one called box breathing. And this is the first thing I teach everyone because if this isn't on point and I'll go over this like nothing else will work very well.
Christa:
24:49 So this is, this is to activate your rest and digest and nervous and you can't always be in fight or flight, right? We remember this from sixth grade, right? Can always be in fight or flight. Makes your system off balance. It's your vagus nerve. So anyway, so box breathing or Foursquare breathing is inhaling for one, two, three, four holding for two, three, four, exhaling for a fully and completely two, three, four and then holding two, three, four. And you can keep blowing out because remember the answer is to exhale equal to or greater than you inhale. So I don't care what it is. Inhale four. Exhale, inhale, three, exhale five, whatever. I don't care. But if you like practice this from in it, there's no one that feels worse. No one that feels worse. But sometimes if you've been breathing out of your chest, shallow breathing for a long time, it's a little harder.
Christa: 25:40 And so, um, I was count so I, we could keep talking through this, but really what we're trying to do here is activate our rest and digest. So here's the deal. A lot of people are walking around in fight or flight all the time and that moves blood away from your critical, like central organs because it wants you to run from a tiger. But like we live like that a lot. And so that means we have our fight or flight more activated than our rest and digest them. There's two sides of this Vegas nerve that goes from our brain. This is our gut brain connection all the way through our body and our, and our guts. This affects your mood, anxiety, all these things. And so if we're activating one more than the other all the time, which is out of balance, like it's like a muscle. You have now strengthened one side and like totally pooped on the other side and the other one becomes weak. And so with my mother who she has this, she had this autoimmune crisis happen. I've never met an autoimmune condition that didn't have a stressful trigger. We're working through breathing and it's interesting to watch her cause she's really coming out of her chest, which me, that's what she's learned for years. Right. And it's really hard to retrain. So breath work is like the answer to resilience.
Jen:
26:52 So is breath work good for sustaining energy also?
Christa:
27:00 Yeah. So like sustaining energy. I mean I could add a lot of things to that checklist. I would love for you. So I like to always give too long of an answer to every question. So I would love, I would love for you to like do mental intake of like the basic lifestyle things first and then we look at the deeper underlying causes. So with energy, especially during the time of the day, I would ask you to first look at how is your hydration, how is your nutrient intake, here is the one that no one ever thinks about. How was your digestion of your nutrient intake? Which goes directly back to the breath work we just did because Hebrew always in fight and flight you're not digesting very well. So sometimes I've given people an assignment to just activate their rest and digest, which is called the parasympathetic nervous system before meals and eat more mindfully.
Christa:
27:44 And like if your kids are making you crazy, like you know, spend time with them and but like if, if mealtime is stressful, maybe you want to consume your food and chew it like outside of the stressful interactions so you can have that rest and digest. Because if you're not digesting and absorbing things very well, you're not really getting the benefit from the food. So no one really talks about that immensely because, and we also don't think we have that problem, but I guarantee you most people are having that problem anyway. So, um, so first I'd look at hydration. Are you getting enough protein, fat and carb? Like are you eating adequate? Like do you have what you do? You have the raw materials to make energy. Um, because that's what that really looks like. Do you have the raw materials to make the energy?
Christa:
28:23 And then when I look at a deeper reason, I'm like, Oh, there's something eating your energy. So if you have bacterial imbalances, it'll eat up the nutrients that your body needs for energy. And then the other thing would be as like, how has your sleep, um, as well. So once those are like all awesome and good and lovely, then I would look at all those deeper levels. But yeah, breath work, because if you're constantly producing cortisol, your body's always trying to protect you. So it'll deactivate it for some people. And that's really exhausting too. So like if you are constantly elevating cortisol and not living in some rest and digest, like you're going to burn up energy really fast and you're going to feel more exhausted. So in a roundabout way, yes, breathwork would help you sustain energy because you're not going to be blowing through and making it all the time, which is an exhausting. Like if you're constantly like jammed up to run from the tiger, like man, like you can't sustain that for it. Like eventually it's gonna you're gonna crash a little bit. So does that answer your question?
Jen:
29:17 Yes. And I'm thinking about like this whole food situation. So for me, gaining nine pounds over the course of, since we've been on lockdown causes me stress. Like that alone causes me stress. The stress that makes me want to eat. And I'm listening to you talk about breathing and like I don't, I don't breathe, I don't know how I'm alive. I also don't drink water and so I don't, I don't know how I'm alive, but I am alive.
Christa:
29:49 Really resilient teachers were like amazing.
Jen:
29:52 I mean clearly, I mean I'm like the, like the succulent plant that I never water in my house, but, um, although I'm not succulent. Um, so, but anyway, this food thing, can we talk about this for a minute?
Christa: 30:08 Yeah,
Jen: 30:09 I think this is real for a lot of people. Like I'm seeing it on their Facebook feeds and everybody's joking about the Corona 19. Oh, go to the Corona in it. But like, it's really not funny. It's not funny to me. I don't want to gain any more weight. I mean fortunately, you know, things are turning around, but like, do you have any hacks in terms of like emotional eating? Is that what this is?
Christa:
30:32 Yeah, possibly. So like there's a few things that happens. I think, again, if we would look at this with a lens of emotion, like emotionally, is there a component? Yes. Nutritionally. Is there a component? Yes. Physically, is there a component? Like physically, physically, things have changed. Cause now my break room is like right next to my office all the time. Right. So like, I mean it always was, but it's just a little different. Right. Or we're dealing with it and needed a little bit different way. So I break this apart because I think things don't live in a silo. It's like no matter what you're talking about with nutrition, it's a very emotional topic regardless. So let me talk science for a second. It doesn't take long for our gut microbiome to shift and for us to change how we're like wanting different foods. So it takes only 24 to 36 hours.
Christa:
31:14 So once we kind of like go down that path, it's not your fault. We started like open this gate and we're like, Oh, it actually increases a certain kind of bacteria population. It's like, Oh, and now I want more of that stuff. So there's like actual things happening there, right? Which is fine. And then we have a downstream effect. We'll, it'll kind of change our hormones. So I think there's like a lot there because it's partially lifestyle, right? It's also, and so it's no one's, it's not, it's not a fault, but it's like, Ooh, what could I do to make this different? And you're like, Hmm, I could drink a water before. I like run to the kitchen and get myself the third or fourth or 10th snack for the day. Like the question is mindfulness, right? And also like being okay with loving yourself.
Christa:
31:52 Like, Oh if I want to nourish myself, is that like is that the answer or am I just doing it out of like bored? Like am I using food is like not really food anymore. Like I'm really just trying to like help my emotions right now I guess. And so again, being mindful and being aware is really the first thing. Cause like I'm not here to give someone random rules about like, Oh don't do this at this time or whatever they do. You have to kind of establish what your own thought processes. And for a lot of people, sometimes we're snacking a long time. There's people that don't agree to this method. Like I'm all about, Hey, you should fast overnight by the way, 12 hours because your body needs to rest and repair. It can't always be digesting. That's a busy process for your body.
Christa:
32:32 It needs to do repair at night. So like, can you start with like not eating for the 12 hours overnight? If you can't, there's something else going on there. Like your blood sugar's a little wonky or something else going on. Okay. But then you can do like 14 hours. And I'm not saying that you shouldn't eat, but it's like, sometimes I think that's a piece too. It's like, Hey, I'm going to eat. Well, another reason people are doing a lot of snacking is because they aren't actually getting like a adequate nutritious meal at a certain time. So they're not full. Like, they're like, they don't have any satiety. Right. They're not satiated. They're not full. They're not satisfied. They're not happy. And so then you go back right away. So it's like eat enough at a meal. Um, it's like people, I remember having this conversation.
Christa:
33:10 So there's a certain generation that's always told to like under eat and over exercise, which we're trying to reverse because that does not work by the way. Right. So, um, so I remember telling someone recently, like, you are not eating enough for what you're doing. She's like, Oh no one's ever told me that. Like I have to get over that thought. It's like you have to eat enough cause you're gonna be starving in two hours. And then you're like, like that's a, that's like a bad cycle. Cause then you're constantly pushing up your insulin, um, all the time. So I would just encourage you to like get enough, get a protein, fat and carbs. A lot of us are mezzo Mars, which means we pack on things a little bit easier than, you know, those people that don't pack on things. That's me. I'm with the first group right there.
Christa:
33:50 Like I, I'm gonna, I'm gonna look like how I consume like, you know, like, like I was in the kitchen all the time or whatever. So, so it's important for us to kind of protein, um, get good healthy fat sources and proteins first in the day to improve our society early in the day. Cause a lot of times we start with, you know, traditionally breakfast as carby. And so if we start with carbs only without those other things to kind of round us out, it pushes up our insulin and then we kind of drop and then spike and drop. We're constantly looking to spike it again. So it's sort of a vicious cycle. And that's really what like constant stacking does is it doesn't allow our digestive tract or the janitors in our gut to like do their thing, migrating motor complex, like to do the cleanup, et cetera. It keeps our blood sugar just unnecessarily escalated and it causes a bunch of like random problems too. So this will also eat up B vitamins, which affect your energy and it'll also possibly affect your sleep. So if you're waking up between like four and five in the morning, your cortisol might be rising too early. Um, because like maybe your start, like you, your blood sugar is not stable before bed and so it's rising cause it's like, Oh I'm hungry right now. So, um, all of those things interesting as well.
Jen:
34:56 All right. I can't let you go today without talking for a little bit about immunity cause I know our immune system because I know like when this first came about, you were the first person I think I went over to your Instagram and I was like, Hey Krista, like I need to, I need to boost my immune system. Do I need to take wellness formula? Like what do I need to do? Because I mean one thing I know for sure and you know, and I don't, I don't even have a fraction of all that knowledge you've gotten your noggin when it comes to health and wellness. But I do know as most of us know at this point that um, negative emotions and like stress are bad for us and bad for our health. And so of all things, you know, we were all sort of mindful as mindful as we've ever been right now of how we don't want to get sick, we don't want to get this virus. So we want to boost up our immune system. We don't want to tear it down. And yet this whole pandemic is really stressful. So what's a girl to do? Yeah. Yeah.
Christa:
35:56 So for me, I have to tell you where, um, what it does, so I can tell you how to overcome it, if that's okay. Because that's how my brain worked. Like I'm like, let me tell you what's going on. So you understand that piece cause I'm all about like, I want you to be able to fix this on your own somewhat, right or to as much extent as possible. So stress does degrade our immune system multiple ways. It does alter our gut microbiome, which is like one of my favorite things to talk about. But in general, it naturally just suppresses what I call our immune system soldiers. So our frontline defenders, so this is actually technically called secretary IGA or SIG IGA. So it's reduced by stress, gut imbalances, steroids, like nasal sprays, hello, flown a season, nutrient deficiencies over exercise, et cetera. So, um, I look at this marker that a regular doctor sometimes do.
Christa:
36:45 I use it a lot and I look at it and if I have that really suppressed on someone, I know I have to support that before anything else will be strong enough. Like if you don't have any soldiers defending your front lines, you better refill that, that front line before anything else is going to even work. Right. Does that make a little bit of sense? Like we've got, it's all explain how you do that, but I want you to know you can't out supplement your lifestyle. So if you're stressed. So I have concern that the stress and the perceived stresses and the perceived fears, et cetera, um, that have been created out over the last, you know, this interesting last month is possibly more harmful. I mean, I'm just saying like it's possibly more harmful than the thing itself, just because of what it does to our immune systems.
Christa:
37:30 So it suppresses our frontline immune system, soldiers, secretory IGA. I've had people supplement the appropriate things, but because they were overexcited like, and I, and I'm thinking of a particular case where it was an athlete, so it's not like the average person exercise. But like the person who's like doing all the time and then also has these like school stresses or other stresses or entrepreneurship stresses. We could not get that number up without changing the lifestyle. So supplemental you can increase your secretary IGA by one. Let me talk about all the, like the big things. Then I'll give you a couple like hard hitters. If I'm looking at someone's stuff and I see their immune system like super low, I'm going to one, address the things that are making it low. So gut imbalances, which are like you see with gas, bloating, et cetera, like all types of things, right?
Christa:
38:15 So I'm going to try to fix those gut and balances. I'm going to look at the lifestyle pieces, but I'm going to give, there's two things that really help vitamin a at least 5,000 I use per day of retinol palmitate, um, preferably over beta carotene. Um, the combination is fine. And then also, um, immunoglobulins. So I um, am just obsessed with high quality claustrum and what it does it like directly influences and improves this marker. Again, you cannot sell the lifestyle. It's the stuff the babies get where they breastfeed. It's a really unique and interesting. So it's like nature. We have to breastfeed to get classroom. Um, there's no, um, and so I like love a particular brand. Um, which I don't know if we want to mention that cause I think with every, the thing you have to keep in mind with every supplement is that there's quality things, right?
Christa:
39:03 Like it's not regulated. I'm not suggesting someone should regulate it that doesn't know what they're doing, but we have to be aware that there's like third party testing, there's high quality and it always goes back to like company integrity. So I really like sovereign labs. The professional lines a little more bioavailable. You can order like a free pack. My point is here you can't like do something for like, let me give you an example. People will take elderberry syrup and they're like, Hmm, yeah I took that one. I'm like ill. I'm like, okay. By that time it's probably a little late. I'm like, you kind of need to prep a little in advance. And the cool thing about algebra is it does have some really unique properties that all work synergistically. And if you're taking it, and by the way, allergy season, really good time for that cause of the course of 10 in it helps degrade the reason people have allergies.
Christa:
39:45 And so anyway, it's pretty cool. Um, but, but people will sometimes take things kind of like Willy nilly. I don't know if that's a word, like sometimes when people are like, what does that mean? I'm like just randomly, like just super randomly to where it's like not long enough, strong enough, enough of a duration to actually make a difference. And by the way, if you were taking something but you're not really addressing the underlying piece that's important to them. So I just, it's kind of like, Hey, by the way, it's not like a one liner. I wish it was. Um, there's definitely things that all like support it right now that do a freaking awesome job. Right? Uh, but also you gotta be aware of, are you having these other low grade signs of inflammation? Hey, like do something about it now. Like, if your energy is not good, you'll be a lot happier in the neck over the next 10 years if you address it.
Christa:
40:29 Otherwise it like, it's not like it just magically improves if it's like not really good now. So the short answer is like, how do you improve your immune system? We've got to reduce stress. Breathwork is your best free friend. Not joking. Totally joking. I like, I wish I was because I could, none of us really want to do that. So it was the hardest thing cause it's like, yeah, I mean is there something else I could do? Um, but uh, so, so, but I want to, I like, and I'm a fan of the free thing over the other, like please start with that, that free, that free stuff. Um, but yeah, there are things that like will directly repopulate those soldiers on the front lines, but there's stuff that keeps turning it down too. So if you are already a person, so I would just say like, if you're a person who kind of gets sick more than once a year, you should look at your underlying immune system overall.
Christa:
41:15 Like, what imbalances are there, what nutrient deficiencies are possibly there? I'm just like, that's kind of a public service announcement. Like if you're getting sick more than once a year, um, then it's a little lower than it could be in debt. Don't let that be a stressful piece. This is meant to be empowering. Like, Hey, by the way, most people wouldn't say I like to like, I'm like a second layer person. I'm like, Oh, you know, generally you're looked at as healthy, but like we can always make you feel a little bit better. So that's how I, that's kinda how I look at things.
Jen:
41:45 All right, so Chris, you, yes. And you, you are just such a like walking encyclopedia that is constantly like updating. It's just like every time I talk to you it's just, there's so much in there. So you guys listen to Chris. If you want to soak up more of her genius, make sure and subscribe to her podcast is called the less stressed life podcasts and um, and then on the web, where can people visit you?
Christa:
42:12 Yeah, I try to make it simple, just less stress to nutrition. You can find the podcast and all the things over there. And we were talking about light in this month on the podcast, and you read a bunch about light and health, and it's, if you're kind of nerdy, I mean, that's super mind blowing, fun, fun stuff. So
Jen:
42:27 yes, we are a nerdy crowd around here, so we'll definitely check that out. Thank you so much for joining us today, Chris. I really appreciate it. And, uh, and I'll see you soon.
