Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes breaks down how cortisol floods your system during stress and blocks the neurotransmitters that calm you down. She walks through diet, aromatherapy, and meditation as ways to rebuild GABA and serotonin, which cuts inflammation and steadies your stress response.
Cortisol, our stress hormone, impacts all the other hormones. Hormones impact the availability of neurotransmitters. Relaxation hormones like GABA are known to help reduce inflammation. One of the things that's triggered when people take muscle relaxants is gaba, and that's partly because it helps relax the muscles, but it also helps reduce inflammation. Neurotransmitters, as I've mentioned before, work as a unit with hormones. As you increase calming neurotransmitters, you're going to increase your hormone balance, reduce your blood sugar and improve your cortisol response strategies to balance your neurotransmitters. Eat a healthy diet. Your body makes neurotransmitters from the foods that you eat. So if you're eating crap, it doesn't have the materials it needs to make the neurotransmitters. Aromatherapy has been shown to increase neurotransmitter availability, increase serotonin, increase dopamine, even increase norepinephrine. For focus. Meditation is wonderful. Open awareness meditation or focused meditation, any kind of meditation can really help you become more aware of where you are in the moment and what is in the moment. And that can help you refocus your energy and step back and take a look at when you finish meditating, you can ask yourself, now, how am I going to use my energy to move forward toward my rich and meaningful life? You know, now that I've regrouped and simple mindfulness, checking in with yourself periodically throughout the day. How do I feel? What are my needs? What is the best use of my energy right now to move toward my rich and meaningful life?
