134 | How Should I Deal With Stress?

Welcome back to another episode of the Real Health Podcast. Today, we're talking about actually how to handle stress well. Like how we manage stress, whether it's physical stress, emotional stress, chemical stress, spiritual stress. Stress affects us all. And so we just need to know maybe some tactics, not only just from a supplement standpoint, but even from a lifestyle standpoint.

How do we handle stress? We will all be stressed. There are, without question, stressful times in all of our lives. And so how do we process it? Hey, just a side note.

If you haven't noticed, we have transferred Manna Monday to its own separate podcast. So make sure you look up Manna Monday if you want the five minute Monday downloads for the week in terms of, hey, here's just a thought for the week. So that's on Manna Monday, own separate podcast, but hey, Real Health Co, it's designed, the Real Health Co podcast is designed to give you a fifteen to twenty minute commuter style podcast to help you in your health journey, add as much value as we can in your health journey. And not just for you, but for your entire family. Today is gonna be probably more for the adult, more for you as a parent walking through a journey potentially of stress.

And how do we process it and then how do we obviously support it in those seasons? I know for me personally, there's only been a couple times in my life where I felt the stress, really the stress build up to where it affects your sleep, it causes even a sense of anxiety or anxiousness, heart palpitations, right? Like we all feel that. And so I think it's important to help you understand how to process it. Stress is not meant to be avoided.

It's meant to be kind of met head on and realize, hey, if your body is giving you this warning sign of stress, how do we handle that? All right? And so I wanna give you just some really practical tips to help you in the most stressful seasons of life. For me, fall is super busy. I mean, I've got four kids in all the sports, coaching soccer, running a business, being a doc, like all the things.

How do I handle it even when I'm the most anxious, even when I'm the most stressed? And so let's kind of create really practical knowledge for you. I love 3 John 1:2. 3 John 1:2 says that, I pray that you may enjoy good health, even as your soul is getting along well. There's a sense of like soul care that we all need.

Our soul is meant to be cared for. And so some things that I do every day I want to share with you. How do I modify, modulate my stress levels and adapt well? So what does stress actually do to us? Like what does it do internally?

So let's process that first so you have some understanding of how stress affects us and then we can talk about solutions. Stress is not just in your head. It's not just something that you think about. It's not just something that you're processing, hey, I'm stressed. There's actually a really specific hormone response that's happening.

And one of the things that when stress is prolonged, it drives cortisol levels to rise, which is a stress hormone. There's other stress hormones we call catecholamines, that that starts to have an effect on our body, causes our heart rate to increase, causes our breath rate to increase. Our sleep starts to get disrupted. Our immune system actually starts to reduce or get disrupted. As we see our immune system weaken, we're more prone to illnesses, potentially viral loads can have a bigger effect on our body.

And then obviously our emotional resiliencies starts to drop. So short term, stress can sharpen us, but long term, chronic stress definitely drains us. It deplete starts us. So the first thing is most important. You have to be aware.

Awareness is key. Like you have to name what you're feeling. If you feel stressed, have to identify, hey, in this season, I feel more stressed. And that is very important to process verbally with someone else to identify, hey, I feel the stress, I feel the tension. The emotional health starts with awareness.

It starts with not ignoring, but actually being aware. So a tactic, daily just kind of pause and name, what am I feeling right now? Like, okay, I feel my heart rate increase. I feel stressed. What does that actually feel like?

What am I feeling in my body? And I think the pause and awareness is key to identify the response so that you can start to create a solution. Now, there's ways to do it. There's ways where you can just talk with someone else or just journal. Journaling is key.

Journaling how you're feeling. Hey, I feel like my heart is racing. I feel like my breath is increasing. I feel drained. I feel low energy.

I feel depressed. The depressive symptoms are this. Journal it, write it out. It is important that you take what's inside and bring it outside. And one of my favorite ways to do that is through journaling.

All right? And I do that in the morning. When I wake up in the morning, I kind of write out how I'm feeling. And I think that's important for you as well. If you feel stressed, if you feel depressed, write it out.

It's not just in your head. It is how your body's actually responding to season, and I want you to just go ahead and journal. That's my first encouragement to you. Psalm 62 verse 8 says, pour out your hearts to him for God is our refuge. Psalm 62:8.

So go ahead and just pour it out. Just write it out and process it out loud. Number two, support stress physically. So movement particularly can help reduce the cortisol stress, right? So actually twenty to thirty minutes of movement daily reduces our levels of cortisol.

So what does this look like practically? Well, this is a beautiful season. Fall is in the air. Get out and move. Get out and walk.

Just twenty to thirty minute walks can reduce stress significantly in our body and actually can help lower our cortisol levels. One of the other things I love to do is breath work. Like when I'm feeling the most stressed, I'll engage in some diaphragmatic breathing where I'm doing like box breathing, four seconds in, four second hold, four seconds out, four second hold. And box breathing is a fantastic way to help your body process stress on a day to day basis. Another key point, physically, go to sleep.

Go to sleep early. Take a nap, maybe a power nap during the day, but make sure you're getting seven, eight, nine hours of sleep at night because sleep helps our bodies recover from the stress load of the day or the week or the month. And if we're out of rhythm or out of sync with our sleep, it will directly impact how we recover and how we feel the next day. Okay, so we've got take a walk, right? Movement.

We've got breath work. We've got sleep. What are some supplements that are key to help you handle stress? One of my favorite supplements, like if you feel anxious, if you feel like your stress levels are high, one of my favorite supplements is called Catecholacalm. Catecholacalm.

And so what this supplement is, is it's a bunch of different herbs to help our bodies handle stress. It keeps our our kind of stress hormones at bay and prevents us from getting into that high stressed feel state, that anxious state, that anxiety state. So catecholacomb is one of my favorites. Number two is magnesium. Magnesium, at just a couple hundred milligrams, twice a day, really can calm our nervous system quite well.

Any type of adaptogenic herb is great. Ashwagandha, rhodiola, ginsengs are great at helping our adrenal system handle stress. And of course, B vitamins. The B vitamins get depleted significantly under stress. So making sure you're consuming a high quality methylated B vitamin can really help your body process stress really well.

So when we think about physical support, we're walking, we're sleeping, napping, right? We're doing breath work, and we're supplementing our bodies really well. What about nutrition? Nutrition plays a huge role as well. So when we consume bad foods, inflammatory foods, sugar for instance, it creates an excitement to the nervous system, and that's not what we want.

We wanna calm down the nervous system. We wanna support the body to heal and regulate. So making sure you're consuming nourishing foods, calming foods, right? Foods that are supportive to our body's health, right? So healthy proteins, healthy fats, healthy carbohydrates.

Even having a day of fasting, where you're just removing food and letting your body heal and regulate can be super impactful as well. What some emotional supportive tools, right? That's the physical. What about the emotional piece, right? One of the most important things is setting boundaries.

So when you say yes to something, you are gonna say no to something else. And so it's important to make sure that your yes is right so that you're not saying yes to everything, right? If you're emotionally depleted and stressed, it's also important to make sure that you're not saying yes to everything. Now, I'm a person that will say yes to a lot of things and get me in trouble. And so, what I realized is that you only have so much capacity.

And so if you're saying yes to a lot of things, you will say no to something else. And a lot of times you're saying no to your recovery. You're saying no to your sleep. You're saying no to your body's ability to regulate. And so make sure you're choosing your yeses and nos wisely in this season as well.

Set boundaries. Make sure you're You're making proper decisions, wise decisions where you're expending energy in a mindful way. You're not just saying yes to everything. One of my other favorite emotional tactics is journaling, specifically with gratitude. So at night, what I like to do is I like to write three things that I'm grateful for from the day.

Like, what are three highlights? What are three things that were just went so incredibly well? And then after I write those three things down, and maybe it's four, maybe it's five sometimes, I like to think ahead. Right? So like Jewish tradition is is actually when the sun goes down, the start of the next day begins.

It's not when you wake up in the morning. And so what I like to do is frame my mind towards the day tomorrow. And I like to write down three things that if they were to be done, it would be just an incredible it'll be incredible day. So what am I looking forward to of the next day? So that when I wake up in the morning, and when I rise, I'm already thinking in my soul, in my spirit, I'm already thinking, hey, these three things are something that I'm looking forward to when I wake up.

I think it provides a sense of, like, vitality and energy to my morning. It provides me with some type of vision for the next day. So I'll write three things I'm grateful for, and I'll write three things that I'm looking forward to the next day. So that when I wake up, I already have those things in my heart. I've already established those things in my mind, and all of that will have its effects and build together, right?

We're not just trying to support ourselves spiritually or physically. We also need to support ourselves emotionally, mentally. And a gratitude journal is a great way to do that. So kind of a recap, right? Stress is universal.

It affects us all in different seasons. We're gonna feel stress. Don't ignore it. Identify it. Write it out.

Talk about it because it's essential that you don't just subdue it, but you process it and you process it outward. You wanna name what that stress is. Identify it. You wanna support it by getting good sleep, quality nutrition, supplement it well, right? Because stress will have its season.

There will be a beginning and there will be an end. Practice boundaries, practice gratitude, practice journaling. Three things that you're grateful for. Three things that you're looking forward to. And anchoring always in faith that tomorrow's gonna be a better day.

That this season will come to an end. And if you can handle your stress levels well, then then it can have a massive impact on your health, on your health care journey. And these are things that we can teach our kids and our kids' kids. These are generational tactics that we can help our kids process stress better because we don't want to ignore it. We don't want to run away from stress.

We will not run through it, and we want to work through it. Hard times build hard and tough people. We don't want to ignore and run away from hard times. We want to work through it. We want to grow through it.

So as we think about this next season ahead, if you're in a tough season, a stressful season, make sure that you're supporting your health properly, physically, emotionally, and spiritually so that you can live a healthier day. Right? You can live a healthier life. Hey, as always, if this has been helpful for you, if this is valuable for you, right? As we wanna add value to you and your health journey, make sure you share the episode.

Make sure you like it on our Instagram or like it on Give us a five star review on our podcast, on Apple, or wherever you're listening from, we would value that tremendously. And as always, thanks for listening to another episode of the Real Health Podcast.

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