#25 Back to School Strategies for Preventing Infections When Stressed

The information provided in this podcast is educational and not intended to diagnose or treat medical conditions. Dr. Donnie Wilson struggled for decades to solve her numerous health issues and heal her body. But with focused determination, she healed herself. And in doing so, she discovered the Dr. Donnie stress recovery Protocol. On this show, you're going to hear from doctors, nutritionists and Experts along with Dr. Donnie, who will give practical advice and wisdom to help heal your body. This is how humans heal.

It's Dr. Donny. It's good to see you all. I'm hoping maybe I'm catching some of you live so that you can share your questions or post your questions for me and I'd be happy to hear from you. I'm live right now on Facebook and on Instagram, so wherever you're joining me from, I I'm glad you're here. And I wanted to check in today since this is right after Labor Day and a lot of schools are starting. Maybe some of your schools have even started last week. But I know my daughter's school started. She had orientation today and her school is starting especially this week and next week. Seems like they're getting things going. My daughter is in high school. She's a senior in high school. So, you know, it kind of feels like we've been leading up to her senior year now for 12 years, I guess. And here we are at her senior year of high school, and it happens to me that she's, we're just coming through this pandemic. So it's a very interesting and stressful time in addition to the usual stresses of a student. I wanted to share a bit about what I'm noticing with my daughter getting back to school and what I'm hearing from patients and what I'd love to hear from all of you in terms of what you're experiencing, the challenges you're facing, so that I can really help you through it as some of, you know, stress and helping us with staying healthy while stressed is one of my the things I enjoy doing the most. I know it sounds kind of strange to enjoy helping with stress, but it's just that it's one of the things that I researched the most and it's the thing that I help the most with my patients, patients with all different health issues, everything from.

Infections like HPV or sinus infections or even other viral infections. And whether I'm helping patients with digestive issues or anxiety or sleep issues or autoimmunity, it comes back to helping with stress and stress recovery. That's actually what I've written about in my books that I've already published and what I'm writing about in the book I'm writing right now, I'm writing a new book about stress and stress recovery. And I'm right in the middle of it. So my mind is totally in the place of understanding stress and how to help us all as humans to be healthy even though we're under stress. And that's the thing is, of course right now we have this. A lot of fear around this particular virus. And it's this catch 22 because you want to be vigilant, you want to be mindful and careful to protect yourself from a virus, any virus out there. But at the same time, if it crosses over into anxiety or fear, then that can work against you. Because what we know is that fear and stress, if it gets too high, if our cortisol and our adrenaline levels go too high, it actually inhibits our immune system from working well. And so.

It'S tricky to walk that line. It's tricky to find what can I do on a daily basis to be aware and prepared and careful, but without overstressing. And that's, I think, what we're all being really challenged to do right now. And I was talking to my daughter before I jumped on here because she just got back from the school and she definitely, you know, let me know that people seem on edge. The teachers, the administrators, the students. You know, there's a lot of unknowns and a lot of how do we be careful and how do we protect ourselves and yet how do we go on with life? How do we re enter school and work and the usual activities? And so I think one of the. There's several things, I should say there's several things we can do to help us walk that line. You know, how to be prepared and not be overly stressed. Because again, when we're overly stressed, it works against us. It's going to decrease our immunity and make us more susceptible to even cold and flu viruses or other health issues like migraines and hormone imbalances and autoimmunity and gut issues, right? So we want to be able to understand that stress is part of our life right now. We can't fight it. It's just going to be there. It's going to be part of our life, our whole life. That's just part of being human. So how do we help ourselves through.

Comes down to some of the things. I refer to them as self care. Sometimes if an acronym can help you to just kind of get your head around It c is for clean. Unclean eating can mean different things for different people. But I would say it starts with focusing on whole foods. You know, like what you would grow in a garden and what you could get at the grocery store. That's not necessarily fast food and not necessarily packaged food, but like actual vegetables, actual fruits, actual meat or fish, or protein sources, other protein sources.

Actual food. You know, it's whole foods. But if you can get it organic, even better, because then you've got really clean, healthy food that doesn't isn't covered with pesticides. And so as much as possible, choosing organic, but you also want to choose foods that are not inflammatory, you know, so try to stay away from sugar in particular. Sugar is known to be inflammatory, but not only that, sugar is decreases immune function. So even a spoonful of sugar, and this is the thing, is that sugars in a lot of foods that you would even think are healthy foods, it always surprises me to find sugar and condiments. And even if you can be shopping at the healthiest grocery store and pick up what should be the healthiest food item and it's going to have sugar in it. So look at the labels and if you see cane sugar or sugar, try to find an alternative. Try to make it yourself so that it doesn't have to have sugar in there because the sugar adds up. Next thing you know, you've gone through the day and you're having all this sugar that's inhibiting your immunity and acting as inflammatory. And so it's working against you. And that's one of the things, if you just start to get used to being proactive about, that you can actually drop your sugar levels pretty quickly and pretty easily. You also want to be thinking about inflammatory foods. Dairy products are often inflammatory. Gluten, I would say, is often inflammatory. And the best way to find out exactly which foods are inflammatory for you is to do a food sensitivity panel, because then you're going to see which foods are triggering your immune system. And so I do food sensitivity panels a lot with my patients and we offer them through my office in general. So if that's something you're interested in, just reach out to us. But I find it makes huge difference. And you want to get a really high quality food sensitivity panel. It should check for IgA and IgG food antibodies to foods. And this way you can really see what's triggering your immune system. What is your immune system trying to protect you from in your diet? That might even be healthy food. It could be almonds or bananas. That you're thinking is healthy, but if it's inflammatory for your body, it's working against you. So doing a food panel and identifying leaky gut can be really helpful and important part of clean eating.

Let's see. So, and then I think the other thing I would say related to clean eating is just blood sugar balance, making sure you have small meals containing protein. Even if you're vegan or vegetarian, you need to have protein each time you eat and every few hours through the day. Yes, you can do intermittent fasting overnight. So, so you're not going to eat from probably after dinner or in the evening all the way till the next morning. That's a good thing too, to help with your immune system and help you with stress. But you want to then in your eating period during the day, you want to have nice small food in increments, regular, predictable increments. If you think about it, when our body has to wonder when we're going to eat or are we going to eat a lot, are we going to eat a little? Any unpredictability for our body is a stress. So you want to try to be predictable. Think through what am I going to have when I first eat for the day, what am I going to bring with me or have available so that I can have it in the middle of the day, another three hours later in the afternoon or in the evening. So you kind of need to either order your food, have it delivered, and for your children, make sure they have food with them that they can eat and really teach them, hey, if it's been three or four hours and they haven't eaten, have that food with them. I remember when my daughter was in elementary school and even middle school, I had to really be proactive about this because sometimes the kids school schedule doesn't give them breaks to eat. You know, they, if you think about it, they might go like 6 hours or without eating or barely have a chance to get some protein. And so look at your schedule, your kids schedule their school schedule with them and help them learn how to have food available. And you might even have to contact the teacher or the principal and say, hey, my child really needs to get some protein in every three or four hours. Can we make that happen? Do they need to go to the nurse's office? How do we make it so that they can actually stop every three to four hours and get some protein? And that's going to make a huge difference in their focus and their ability to get through the day. They're very stressful days. It's so stressful. I think sometimes for students, they're having to. Sometimes different teachers, different deadlines, different classes, they're trying to learn, they're trying to excel. They have all these rules to follow. It's stressful for them. And so they need to be able to get water and protein that's healthy for them in nice, predictable increments through the day. I wish all schools would just establish that as a standard, but it's not established as a standard in many schools, not from my experience. And so you as a parent may have to be a little bit proactive for your child, but also be proactive for yourself. I'm finding a lot of patients who are working from home.

It's hard to make your own schedule for eating. And so I'm really encouraging people to create that for yourself. What is your lunch break? What is your next break in the day? Whether that's to stop and get some food and some protein, or whether that's to go to the bathroom and get some water or take some deep breaths, you know, build that into your day because that's going to make a difference for you. There's a reason that breaks are usually built into a work schedule and school schedule. But the thing is, is that a lot of jobs and a lot of schools don't honor those breaks. And so we have to be.

Standing up for ourselves and making sure that it happens. And if you are the one creating your own schedule or you're, you know, can be creating your child's schedule, I encourage you to make sure that you get some breaks in there. And that's part of making clean eating possible. But it's also part of the other part of self care. So C is clean eating. A is adequate sleep. R is reducing stress. E is for exercise. So to be able to get these care activities to happen, we have to be a little bit proactive with our schedule. Now that might use. Some of you may use like a calendar on your phone or your computer. I actually, I'm going to show you this because I recently found this and it's. I haven't done a handwritten schedule in so long, but I found this and I thought it was really, not only pretty, but really cool because it. I can put it in front of me, like I can have it here on my desk and jot down little notes of things that I need to remember to do, like if I need to call the school or I need to do whatever. And then you could, I could, you know, you could use this or something similar to remind you that it's time to, you know, take a break or it's time to do your grocery order. Or I have some patients who really like to cook foods ahead of time. So maybe they cook on Sunday and make enough food to last over the week or put some in the freezer so that you don't have to be thinking about food and shopping and cooking every single day.

Let's see. So that's clean eating with adequate sleep. This is the other sort of part of the schedule is getting ourselves in bed in time to be able to get enough sleep. Because that's the thing is if we, the busier our schedules are, it's harder to turn ourselves off and be like, okay, I need to get some sleep so that I can actually get that. It's even possible to get eight hours of sleep. Really optimal is seven and a half to nine hours. But if you figure, hey, let me see what I. How can I even have the space and time to create that? So to make sure you to prioritize that, because otherwise it's easy to deprioritize. Believe me, for many years I would find, you know, you try to squish in more in a single day. You know, our to do lists are long and kids have homework you want to help them with. You have deadlines. You know, there are just so many things. So you just have to kind of help yourself to realize, write it down, here's as much as I can do today. And then it's going to be time to wind down and make sure I can get at least seven and a half to nine hours of sleep. And if you're not sleeping well, definitely reach out. I'm happy to help you. There's so many things we can do to figure out why you're not sleeping well. A lot of times it's because of stress. A lot of times it's that cortisol and adrenaline that's high and stimulating your mind and not allowing you to calm down and go to sleep. But sometimes there's depleted calming neurotransmitters. Sometimes it's related to the inflammatory foods or imbalanced gut bacteria. So we need to figure out why you're not sleeping so we can solve that for you. But once you've solved all that, then it's just a matter of making sure your schedule is allowing for you to be in the bed.

So that you can sleep. I laugh because I was that person for such a long time of not actually getting myself into the bed with enough, even chance to be able to get enough sleep. But writing a book about sleep helped me solve that because it really helped me prioritize my sleep. The R is for stress reducing activities. So this could be. I like to make it encourage you to choose what's best for you. So it could be anything from meditation to gardening to deep breathing to calling a friend, drinking tea. So many things, taking a swim in the ocean or walk on the beach, whatever it is that's stress reducing for you. And there's studies on all of these things. I've been reviewing all those articles again for this book I'm working on and I'm excited for you to be able to have the book in your hands to read it. Exactly. Because I'm talking about stress reducing activities that are going to be specific to you and your stress pattern. But for now, I encourage you to notice what you're already drawn to. Like if you enjoy taking a bath, maybe taking a bath is your best sort of meditative stress reducing activity. Maybe if you love watering your plants and working in the GARDEN Even for 10 minutes, maybe that's your best stress reducing activity. Or taking the dog for a walk. Or maybe it's watching some show on TV that makes you laugh. So just make sure you actually make room for that in your schedule. And same for your kids. Kids need stress reducing activities as well. I really wish they would encourage this more and do it more in school. Some schools are starting to, which is totally awesome. But if your child's school doesn't already integrate in stress reducing activities, then you may want to help them to do that when they're home. Maybe it's something you can do with your child first thing in the morning before they run out the door. Let's do 15 minutes of meditation or stretching or some activity outdoors that you enjoy together. Painting or artwork or journaling. Those are some that my daughter's been doing lately. Is drawn toward journaling and painting like actually with a paintbrush on paper or on canvas. And those can be great for children. And what you might actually find is the things that your child enjoys to do may actually be something that you as an adult enjoy also. But maybe you just haven't allowed yourself to do those activities for so long. But if we can be re inspired by our childhood and go hey, what is it dancing?

Is it, is it painting? Is it playing music? Maybe you, you like to play the piano or a different instrument or guitar or sing. You can put on music and sing. That's another great one with kids. They love to sing A lot of them, my daughter is one of her favorite stress reducing activities is singing. And so build that into your day and recognize that that's a thing. It's I would say as important as being able to sleep and eat and is getting our stress reducing activities and we often downplay it or leave it for last. And I encourage you to build it into the schedule like hey, what? And whether you do it with your children or do it separately, but it shows them and encourages them to know that this is a normal part of a human day is the stress reducing part. And again, it doesn't have to be hours. It could be 15 minutes or 5 minutes for that matter. And then the E is for exercise or movement. I like to say movement because some people exercise just is like, forget that it doesn't sound interesting. But movement could be completely different. It could be dance, it could be walking the dog, it could be stretching. I love Pilates and I do also do a lot of.

Strength training on like versus with YouTube videos or I have friends and colleagues who do exercise training with that. You could sign up for workshops that are like on Zoom and YouTube where you can learn. So you can do this from home. It doesn't have to be going into some facility or being exposed to other people. Could be something you do from home. But start with something that feels doable for you, even if it's five minutes of movement or exercise. And then gradually increase because you want to be mindful that if you exercise and you feel more tired or you are worse, it means you overdid it and you need to back off and go a little more gradually to introduce it the next time. So take it slow. Others of you maybe love exercise already. You know, I hear from you, like you maybe you love to run. You can you run for an hour. I mean, so some people can do that. But there's also such a thing as overdoing the exercise, which can also be a stress for the body. The studies I've been reviewing show that if we overdo the exercise, it actually works against us with our hormones, our cortisol and our immune system. So always be mindful of what amount of exercise is really the best match for your body. Just enough and not too much. And also if you're like me and you have hypermobility, you have to keep in mind to not injure yourself while you're exercising. So you want to be mindful and accept your body. Hey, this is my body. I'm not going to be able to lift a huge amount of Weights repetitively. I'm going to end up with joint pain so I need to choose type of exercise that's going to be some. I would say one of the most important things is to work your muscles. Because when we work our muscles, however you're going to do it, if it's doing squats, if it's doing a wall sit, if it's with, you know, if it's some you're doing in, you know, in a training class or online. But however you use your muscles, it's a great signal to our mitochondria which are our energy producers in our cells. It helps with resetting our immune system, helps with something called autophagy, which is how our body cleans out abnormal cells. So you want it and it helps with insulin function and blood sugar levels. So you want to do some amount of using your muscles in order to get that benefit of exercising. But again do it to match your body.

Something a lot of people don't know is that too much stress can actually create an abundance of health problems like high blood pressure, high blood sugar, anxiety, migraines, insomnia, even fertility issues. This is because high stress puts your adrenal glands on overload. They release cortisol and adrenaline which controls your digestion, hormones, immune system, energy focus and even your emotional response. So how can you beat stress when you don't know where to start? That's why we have a free 7 day stress reset program. It's designed to help support weight loss, digestive healing and hormone balancing. It includes support for integrating self care, daily tips come to you by email and video, gluten free dairy free meal plans as well as grocery shopping lists, journal pages and more. This free program will help you beat stress and put you on the back path to wholeness in your body. Get your plan now for free@drdani.com.

Okay, so that's the self care and I think in the midst of that we covered a lot of things that can disrupt or decrease your immune system and make you more susceptible to any kind of infections. So there's also supplements by the way, there's a lot of supplements and vitamins and herbs. They can be used to help with Aphrodite, seeing someone at the door. Supplements that can help with your, with your health in general, with your stress recovery and for your immune system. So maybe some of you already you take supplements or familiar with that and there's quite a bit of studies on a lot of different vitamins. I have to be really careful because of course here I AM on a live video and.

We'Re not in a doctor patient conversation. But if I could help you, I'd be happy to. So reach out to my office if you'd like more specifics on how to help your body specifically with nutrients. But some of my favorites are vitamin C. Because vitamin C is well researched even at low doses, like 500 milligrams once or twice a day can be really great for immune system, but also for the adrenal glands with stress recovery and so much more. So for children, the dose of vitamin C is about 100 milligrams per year of age. So for children it would be not as high as for an adult. But children can take vitamin C in small quantities. And the thing about vitamin C is if you took too much, you'd probably get loose stool. So that's one way to know if your dose is a little too high or too much at once. But really, people would have usually have to take quite a bit of vitamin C to have loose stool. So that's a great one. Zinc is also amazing for immune system and also for healing, wound healing. And so even even a small dose of zinc, like 30 milligrams, 15 or 30 milligrams is a nice, just general amount of zinc to help support your body while you're under stress. You know, that's the thing. We're essentially, we're under stress. So how do we help our bodies get through that stress without leaving us vulnerable? There's also herbs like, I mean, there's a classic of like echinacea, but there's also other herbs like astragalus and andrographis and elderberry and herbs that have been shown for so over so many studies to help the immune system action actually function better. And you can get these herbs in so many forms in chewables for kids or in liquids or in capsules or in powders. I mean, so this is why I work so hard to work with the companies, the supplement companies that have the greatest, they do the quality testing. They are hypoallergenic, where, you know, you're getting what it says on the label and you're not getting other stuff that you don't want. I mean, here we are working so hard to eat clean. We don't want to take a supplement that's not clean. We want to take clean supplements. And that's where as a practitioner, I can, I can access those and I can make it available to you and to my patients. So if you're interested, you can always go to Dr. Donnystor. Dr. Just go to drdoni.com or drdonistore.com and you can find.

Different forms or just reach out to us because we research every day for people. And I look for, I'm always looking for efficiency. So when I create products for my supplement line, I'm always looking for products that have research to make sense but also are efficient because I'm the kind of person where I'm like, if I can take one pill and get really good support, I'm going to want to take that, have that one bottle with that one pill versus having to do it inefficiently and have a bunch of different bottles that then I have to remember and juggle and so on. So what you'll find is when you look under, my products are called Nature Empowered because to me, that's what we're doing. We're being empowered and inspired by nature about how to take care of ourselves. And so we have these nutrients and herbs that we get from nature and we can then swallow them and help our bodies out to keep up with stress exposure and help help us stay healthy. So in the Nature Empowered product line, you're going to find support for stress, decreasing cortisol and adrenaline, or increasing cortisol when it's too low, or calming your nervous system if you're feeling anxious and stressed, or healing leaky gut, you know, helping to digest your food better and heal the intestinal cells, products to support immune systems. Some of these that we're talking about, vitamin C. Vitamin D is another one D, which we get from sun exposure, which hopefully you've been getting some sun exposure safely during the summer, but in the winter months and even in the summer months, it's one of the most common deficiencies I see in lab work is low vitamin D. And it's not only important for immune system, but vitamin D is important for our bones and our hormones and our repair in general. And, and so vitamin D is another just amazingly important nutrient that we likely don't get enough of. Unless you're, you know, just getting 15 minutes of outdoor sun all the time. And you live in the part of the world where you can get the most D. So it's, it's, you know, some people don't need it. I think it's important to get your vitamin D levels tested at least once a year so you know your body. You can know, hey, I need 2,000 IUs to stay at a good dose, or I need 5,000 IUs to stay at a good dose. So have your levels tested in your blood and then get to know how much D does your body need? Because it's depending on your genetics too. Our genetics influence all of our nutrients. And so we're very much individuals in terms of what dose is best. And I can't guess that it's going to be based on knowing your genetics and knowing your test results that we can really see how much, how much vitamin C is best for you, how much, how much.

How much vitamin D is best for you, and so on. And B vitamins, like be like a boy. I love to think about it and talk about the B vitamins because this is along the lines of methylation and methylfolate and methyl B12. And that's another area that I specialize in. And they're also so important for helping us with stress because.

When we use the B vitamins to make the substances that help our bodies manage stress, like helps our adrenal glands function, helps us make neurotransmitters and break down neurotransmitters. So B vitamins are hugely important for managing stress. But the key is how do you know the best dose for you? A lot of that comes down to understanding your genetics and looking at your blood levels. Not, I don't test for B12 and folic acid. I don't suggest it because those are not going to give us information we need. We need homocysteine and methylmalonic acid in the blood to really know is your current dose of B vitamins correct for you? So there's some fine tuning that can go on. But yes, you could start with a good quality multivitamin or B complex. And you just want to make sure that it says methyl folate and methyl B12, because if it doesn't, then to me it's just a cheap garbage multivitamin. If you're going to pay for a multi and swallow it every day, make sure it's a good quality and it's nutrients your body can access and use. And so I like to get like, I'll often suggest a multi that has the B vitamins, antioxidants, the vitamin D and minerals all in one pill. Because then, hey, you can get a lot done in one, right? Talk about efficiency. And then you may along with that, do like an omega 3 fish oil. Because often we don't get enough omega 3s in our diet. And omega 3s are so important for so many things. Our brain, our cells, our.

Hormones are all made from fats. So we need those omega 3s and we need, you know, a lot of times it can help to take a really good quality probiotic. So those are kind of the, like, if you think multi fish oil probiotic, that's going to get you a good base foundation. So what I've done is put those into packets. So if some of you are like, you know, racing out the door and you're like, I always forget my vitamins, then you might want to get the packets because then you can just grab a packet, swallow down and you've got your, the B, the multi with the right B vitamins, omega 3s probiotics. It has vitamin D, magnesium. So you've got like your essentials in a packet. You don't have to be juggling a bunch of bottles. So anyway, so that's how I just. So you guys have a sense of how I think. I mean, this is what I've been passionate about and love doing and I love making it easy for you because if it's not, then it's not going to happen and you're not going to get the benefit. We don't want to stress ourselves out more by overwhelming ourselves with too many supplements and too many bottles and too many decisions. Right. You want to just be like, how do I make a really easy decision? I can just follow it and do it predictably every day. Then you're actually getting ahead of the stress instead of piling on more stress.

So let's see. So those are some of the main supplements. I'm just trying to think if there's, there's, I mean, I, I, like I said, I'm always researching. So those are kind of the basics. But if you're a person who's like, who loves homeopathy, let's say, and you want to be more proactive at preventing.

Health issues, then I would get a homeopathic remedy. Sorry, my nose itches for some reason. Of course.

I would get a homeopathic remedy. There's Triple Flu Defense is a homeopathic remedy you use once a week for fending off cold and flu viruses. There's also homeopathic remedy for other virus types.

There's also homeopathic remedy for strep. So if you're managing infections or infection risk, I would definitely add homeopathic remedies that usually come in liquid form and we have those here in the office. So if you're interested, just reach out to us. I also am totally loving the Cabenson peptide therapy. This is if some of you remember, I was went to be trained by Dr. Cavinson in St. Petersburg, Russia, before the pandemic started. And the Cavenson peptides, which he researched for 50 years, is amazing. I don't think there's near as much research about most things that we use, although there is research on a lot of supplements. But there's a ton of research on Cadencen peptides and how they help reset our system. And they're unique to each part of the body. So there's a Cavenson peptide for the immune system, and this way we can reset immune function. There's Cabezin peptides for intestines, so we can use F for leaky gut, for example. There's Cabezin peptides for stress and brain or pineal gland. So we can. We can use that if you're experiencing a lot of stress, which most of us are. So adding that to your protocol can be really helpful. And so just throwing these things out to you, like, if I were to. If someone were to sit down with me and say, Dr. Donnie, how should I think about protecting myself and really helping to stay ahead of the curve of stress? These are the things that I would think about, and then I would want to know, what is your cortisol level? What is your adrenaline level? So that we can really help your body using nutrients and herbs, again, to.

Really.

Help your body recover from stress. Because if cortisol is too high or too low, we can use different nutrients and herbs to help get it back on track. Whether it's too high at night, we bring it down. If it's too low in the morning, we bring it up. We can do that using nutrients and herbs and help your body.

To really, you know, get the levels where we want them to be and keep it that way. You know, like, it's not just a temporary fix. It's actually helping your body recover from stress and get out of stress mode so that your body can help you. I apologize because my phone is ringing here and I don't know how to get that call to stop happening. So let's see. I see a couple questions here. Here's a question.

If the blood work shows a good B12, which, again, B12 in blood is really only just telling you how much B12 is floating through your bloodstream at that moment. And homocysteine, which is. I like homocysteine because it tells us how well your body is using B12, B6, and folate, but you still have brain fog and sleep disruptions. Now what? So that's good because at least you know that your B vitamins are pretty much on track. But if you're still having brain fog and sleep issues, again, I would be really wanting to understand your cortisol levels and adrenaline levels, because it makes me think that it's not because of. It's not necessarily because of lack of B12. It's got to be something else. So we got to look at your other nutrient levels, but we also need to look at what your cortisol, what your adrenaline. How are your calming neurotransmitters? The calming neurotransmitters are like serotonin and gaba. Do you have enough of them? Because if you don't have enough calming neurotransmitters, then you're going to feel that overstimulation of. Of not being able to sleep or having anxiety and brain fog can be from many different possible causes. It could be from inflammatory foods we were talking about in leaky gut. It could be from imbalanced gut bacteria or overgrowing yeast. They can cause brain fog. A lot of different toxin exposures can cause brain fog, like mold toxins or environmental toxins.

So when it comes to brain fog, there's a lot of things I take into consideration, but I would think of it as, do you have a toxin exposure? Do you have a gut issue, an imbalanced gut bacteria, and how are your cortisol and neurotransmitter and adrenaline levels? Because those areas is where we most often find things to address. And as we address them, then it. It all gets better. The brain fog gets better, the sleep gets better. Of course you're not sleeping well, then that can cause brain fog too, but it starts to get better. And so that gives you a little bit of sense of how I would think that through. But working with. I would be happy to help you, working with you individually to guide you through that, because it can feel like, what do I do now? And a lot of times you go to, you know, the regular doctor's office, and they might be like, oh, your blood work's all normal. You must be fine. And you're like, I don't feel fine. I'm brain fog. Tired, anxious, can't sleep. That can be normal, right? Is that normal? It's not. I wouldn't say it's normal, but it's definitely common. And it's especially common right now when we're under so much stress. We're getting to experience.

What it feels like to be under heightened stress for a long period of time. We're all getting pushed to our limit, and we're all getting pushed into what I call stress mode. And so the symptoms you're experiencing are very likely what how your body experiences stress mode. And that's unique to you. It's very different. So don't look at another person and be like, oh well, why do they feel differently than I do? It's because we all have a unique response to stress. But we can solve it with some of these same methods. We can solve it with the self care. And self care is, you know, that's at least a foundation, right? So I figure at least get the self care foundation going and the supplements that are part of your self care foundation. And then if, then from there you may need to actually do more tests to figure out what else is it that's a stress for you? Is there different foods that are stress for you or toxins that are stress for you or imbalanced gut bacteria that's a stress for you. We keep solving and eliminating the stresses that we can do something about because there's a lot of stresses we can't do much about except that we can if we do our self care that helps us manage those stresses we can't do something about. So I hope that helps. I'm glad that you, those of you who are able to join me, live. And let me see, here's another question.

What test to request to measure neurotransmitters? Okay, so I was just mentioning the neurotransmitters, which is the messengers in our nervous system like serotonin and gaba and even adrenaline is a neurotransmitter. It's a urine test that measures the neurotransmitters. And not all doctors know about this test or order this test. So you're going to need to work with a practitioner who does offer a urine neurotransmitter panel. There's a few different labs that offer it. It's not the regular labs. It's going to be a specialty lab that specializes in neurotransmitters that can run that panel for you. But then you can actually see your neurotransmitter levels, which to me everyone should have. It's, I think it, I think understanding how stress affects us should be part of the annual exam. Right? That is what's going to help us most. And that should be part of what happens in our, in our annual assessment of our health. But it's not what you're going to get in the regular medical exam that your insurance covers. It's just not yet there yet. It's not part of it yet. So it's something you're going to need to take on as your own health advocate and say I want to know how stress is affecting me so that I can help my body better. And then you can access but you're going to want to work with a practitioner like me or who's been trained by me so they know which tests and how to interpret them and how to guide you through it. And this is what I'm also writing about in the new book is what I've learned about guiding people through rebalancing their neurotransmitters, rebalancing their cortisol and recovering from stress. Because I know that there's not a lot of information out there and I want more people to be able to access it. And so I can't wait for you to have that book. It's going to be a few months out because I'm right in the middle of writing it now. But as soon as it's out I'll be definitely sure to let you guys know. So and in the meantime if I can help you, just reach out to me again.

I'm trying to think there should be a link. I can put a link for you. Thank you for all the hearts and likes. I appreciate it.

I have a 7 day stress reset so if any of you are just feeling like you need just where to begin with all of this and a little bit of guidance the seven day stress reset. I'll send you a video each day with like this with me talking and encouraging you on little steps you can implement related to self care. So I think if you go to drdani.com stress reset you can get it for free or you can also get it through my my stress book I wrote a couple years ago ago called the Stress Warrior which is a great place to start if you like to read books. Is Stress Warrior.

The stress warrior or stresswarrior book.com I think it's stresswarrior book.com and you'll see the seven day stress reset and this way you can just start implementing and start putting figuring out how do I get this self care into my schedule again.

It'S the foundation when you can and I know it's not easy believe me it's not easy for me either. Every day have to think about how am I going to get my self care in? How am I going to get a little workout in before I meet with patients? How am I going to get a meditation in when there's various Activities going on, pulling me away from my meditation, you know, so it's not something that comes easy. It's going to take a little discipline and you're going to learn along the way. This is not something where we're perfect from the get go. I don't think any of us is perfect at self care. We have to just learn as we go and be patient with yourself and each day is a new day and so you can go, okay, what did I learn yesterday? What can I try this time? And if we can talk to each other, hey, what works for you? What works for you? So that you can get ideas from other people. And what they found helps for them and their children as they're implementing self care, especially when we're under so much stress.

So let's see. So I think.

If. Yes. So she's saying she's doing self care but not seeing improvement. So if that's the case, if you've been doing your self care and you still don't feel good, then I definitely think it's time to work with a practitioner who can help you get to the bottom of it. What else are you missing? You may need to invest in some more tests to see. Is there food sensitivities and leaky gut? Is there imbalanced gut bacteria? Is there imbalanced cortisol neurotransmitters? Are there toxins you're exposed to? There's gotta be something else that needs to be addressed. Don't give up. Just figure you haven't found what needs to be addressed yet. And don't be hard on yourself because it's not easy. It's not in the common medical system. You have to go out of your way to meet with a practitioner with the right training and the right information to be able to guide you. So it's just the way it is. So I encourage you, if you're not feeling better and you're already doing self care, that just means we need to take more steps to help you recover. Okay, well thank you all very much and I look forward to. I'm here if you need help. Reach out and my office can help connect us. And I look forward to talking to you again soon. Thank you.

Thanks for listening to how humans heal. If you liked this episode, leave a rating and a review. And for more resources, visit drdani.com.