Selfcare Everyday: Healing with Epigenetics | How Humans Heal Podcast

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Educational and not intended to diagnose or treat medical conditions.

Dr. Donni 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.

Hello, everyone. It's day seven of the stress reset and I'm just popping also online in the Facebook group. I'm Dr. Donnie and I'm so glad to have you here with me on day seven. Even if maybe today is your day one, it doesn't matter. Every day can be a stress reset. And that's exactly. I think what I want to talk about today is how to essentially fully integrate being in a stress reset all the time, because that's essentially what our bodies need. I mean, I was thinking this morning and talking with patients this morning about.

How insanely stressful 2020 was, right? I don't think any of us, we already had our usual stresses going on, but I don't think anyone really ever would have anticipated, you know, I don't think we ever anticipated what 2020 was going to be like. But at the same time, I'm kind of like, I always try to be grateful for whatever's going on, right? Like, that's what we. All we can do really, is try to find something we can be grateful for or learning in any situation. And One thing about 2020 is it really taught us all, it really taught us all that stress exists and that we're impacted by stress. You know, that stress has influence on our bodies and our health and our well being. The way I usually think about it is it's gonna affect our energy levels, it's gonna affect our mood, it's gonna affect our sleep, it's gonna affect our digestion. You know, it's gonna affect just how we feel in our bodies. And we know stress is what has the potential to turn on our genetic predispositions. So it's, you know, I think 2020 really brought clarity about that for many people. And of course, now it's extending into January 2021, where we're getting even more opportunities all the time to recognize what effect stress can have on us and what effect that stress recovery can have on us. And so I'm here just to encourage you all on your path of integrating a stress reset into your daily life. I mean, that's what I found. I mean, and this is. I know some of you might just be meeting me or getting to know me a little bit, but what I can share with you is that this has been. I mean, I think it's that I grew up kind of in a stressful environment, like many of us, and I grew up under sort of constant stress. My family, we moved every sometimes every six months, every year. So I went to at least 10 different schools by the time I graduated from high school. And so I grew up with this constant state of change and stress. And it kind of. Plus, I grew up with a mom who's very aware of mental health and psychology. She's a special education teacher. And so I grew up with also this awareness of how all this change could potentially affect us. And through that process, I also grew up with a father who's a pharmacist. And even though it would make sense with a father as a pharmacist that I would be more down the line of pharmaceuticals. And I certainly have an appreciation for pharmaceuticals and the need for them and the usefulness of them. What I learned from my father was what are the things we can do to prevent the need for medications or decrease the doses of medications whenever possible.

From that upbringing.

I also, by the way, have the genes that set me up for stress. I don't know if some of you are familiar with your own genes and your genetics. This is something that I've studied, studied a lot, especially over the past, I don't know, seven or eight years. I studied with Ben lynch, and I've done a lot of study on my own, and I have MTHFR and other genes myself. And so I've again had to learn because of my own health issues. And so what I learned is that, you know, it's the stress that turns on our genetic predispositions, and it also can be the genes that make us more likely to choose stress in our lives. Are some of you like that, too, by the way? Do some of you just know that you're going to tend to keep on choosing stress? You know, like, as much as you're trying, you know, as much as you're like, okay, I'm going to be. I'm going to wake up and I'm going to just be not stressed, you know, starting now. But we also have to acknowledge that we have to some degree this. Like I'm talking about from my upbringing I was brought up to that stress was to be stressed was normal. And also I have the genes that are going to draw me more towards stress. I have mthfr, two gene variations. I have COMT gene variations, I have MAO gene variations. And these are the genes that are called the stress kind of stress warrior genes. They're the genes that lead us to have a higher adrenaline level, which in some ways is a good thing. If you have COMT and MAO genes, you're going to be a survivor. You're going to get through stress better because you're going to have more adrenaline available to help you survive. And so these genes can help us be better at getting through stress, which means that we're going to kind of be more inclined toward choosing.

Stressful situations in our life. So I say all this because I just really want to help you gain an awareness, but also an acceptance of your body and yourself to just we're not to understand sort of the. Our whole selves, expanded view of yourself. By doing that, you're also eliminating a lot of judgment and criticism. Right? Because it doesn't really help to judge yourself or criticize yourself for something that it makes sense why you're choosing it. It was part of. It's part of your upbringing, it's part of our society to kind of drive us into choosing stress. And it's part of our genetic predispositions, a lot of us. So just knowing that and acknowledging, hey, I'm gonna choose stress and there's gonna be stress. We can't. We can't. As much as we would like to go to, even if you were on an island somewhere, there would still be stress because you'd have to still get shelter. Some of you may be, like me, are survivor fans. You'd still have to get shelter and clothing and food. And that's a stress. So even no matter where we are, there's going to be some stress involved. And by the way, some of you who've watched my videos may notice I have a different background today. It's because I'm in my Manhattan office. I'm in my office on 40th and Lexington. And so this is this background that you see that's Manhattan out the window. I'm just near Grand Central station. And so anyway, so that's if you're not used to this view, but it's actually really pretty. I love having plants behind me. So here's a good question. How do I check for genes? Okay, so there's been a lot of different ways to check your genetics over the years. First, we used a lot. I use 23andMe. 23andMe. Doesn't check all of these genes, especially MAO. So I tend not to do 23andMe anymore. There's another company called Ancestry, which 23andMe and Ancestry also can help connect you with your relatives. A patient of mine the other day was saying how she's connected with her relatives through ancestry.com and how exciting that is for her. And so that can also be a good reason to do Ancestry. But Ancestry does give you your genetic data file. And once you have your genetic data file, you can upload it to different software systems. There's a lot of different software systems that have been developed over the years that will then give you your genetic report. So that's one way to do it. And for a long time that was the most cost effective way to do it. There of course are all kinds of companies who now have come out and where they will analyze your genes and give you a report. And they have various costs. Some of them could be anywhere from I think probably between five or six hundred dollars and five or six thousand dollars. And the thing with those is then you do usually a saliva sample and send it in and then they can give you a report. And some of them have different areas of emphasis. Like there's the companies that give you the more mental health associated genes like the.

That usually are done. Now related to. If you're thinking of taking a psychotropic medication like an antidepressant or something for ssri, for example, for serotonin, I definitely, if you're thinking of or you're taking those medications, I definitely encourage you to have these genes checked. Because a lot of times then when we look at the metabolism and your genetics related to metabolism of these medications, we find that a lot of the medications they were recommending may not fit with your body and your genetics and there may be a different medication or different solution for you. So those gene panels can be helpful for that. But like Geno mind, that's a common one. Maybe some of you have heard of Geno Mind, but actually what I tend to do in my practice because I help a lot of people with who come to me, they've been trying to find help with MTHFR and say symptoms of anxiety, depression or, or fatigue or I'm trying to think frequent miscarriages, even abnormal Pap smears, all of these things have been associated with these abnormal genes or these gene variations I should call them. And so then I have shifted to using the Strategene gene panel. Ben lynch had first created software called Strategene and Now he's created a full gene panel called Strategene. And you could always contact my office if you're interested in doing the Strategene test. We can, we can easily send it to you and then I could meet with you and go over your results with you. Because a lot of times what happens is people get a gene panel done and then they're like, now what am I supposed to do with this information? Because it's like learning a foreign language. I mean, literally when I was learning all of this, I felt like I was learning a foreign language and. But now it's just, you know, once you learn a language and you can just look at it and it's second nature. Like it just, you know, I can easily read it and, or if there's something I haven't seen before, I can go look it up. So it becomes, you know, for me it's something that I've, you know, a language that I've learned is the how to interpret genes. And not only that, but once you. It's one thing to know your genes, it's another thing to know are they affecting your health now and if so, what do you do about it? Because there's a lot of practitioners who will run your genes. But I'm not sure that everyone really understands how to address the gene variations. It's a totally different thing. You know, it's like you can't just get your gene, like say mthfr. You can't just find out you have an MTHFR gene variation and start taking folate. Because yes, methylfolate is the right type of folate to take. That's true. But if you just dive in and treat based on the gene variation, you're not really doing justice to your body. You're not really integrating it in a way that it is going to be most beneficial to you. Because just because you have a gene doesn't mean that it's affecting your health and it doesn't mean that you have any certain dose requirement. It just means we need to look further and means, okay, say you have mthfr1 or 2 of the gene variations like me. It means that anytime I'm going to take folate, I'm going to choose methylfolate. But it also means that I'm going to be monitoring my homocysteine levels in my blood and homocysteine can be done by any lab and insurance should cover it. So that's why in my self care essentials program, I don't add a cost for you to do a homocysteine test. What I'm going to do is I'm going to be guiding you which blood tests to get done that you should be able to get done and have insurance cover or if you're going to pay out of pocket, there's ways you can do out of pocket blood work and have it just be maybe a couple hundred dollars or less.

There's ways you can get these tests done like homocysteine, but it's not going to probably be done in your general. When you go in for an annual exam, they're probably not going to do homocysteine unless you're going to a doctor who's gone through more training to understand the need for it. So now you guys know if you're getting blood work done like your annual blood work, I mean, really, I think everybody should get a homocysteine done in their blood work. But especially if you have MTHFR gene variations, you need to know your homocysteine all the time. I would say mine's at about a 5 or 5.5. You want it to be probably between 5 and 8 or between 6 and 8. Really mine's a little bit low. Between 6 and 8 is optimal. And the real concern is when it goes too high, like if it's at like say 15 or 20. Okay, that now we need to figure out why is your homocysteine at 15 or 20. And the first thing I'm thinking of is stress of some type. The reason that homocysteine goes high is is because your body's under stress and it's not using your B vitamins in an optimal way. And so again, through the trainings and the research I've done and working with patients in my own body, I've been able to develop systematic approach. I mean, it's also, I think, part of my personality. You know, maybe you guys can tell. I tend to like to look at things from a big picture and I like to create a system that we follow that has the most likelihood of giving you benefit. I mean, why just do things that are going to spin you in circles anymore? You're already spinning in circles, probably from stress. Let's do this in a way where we can actually systematically solve this. And I think that's just part of the way my mind works.

I love to be able to share that with you so that you can get the most out of it. I know how many of you have probably been searching and searching and reading and reading and trying to figure it out on your own. And here I am. This is just. This is what I do. This is what I love. This is already what I'm trained for and what I've learned from thousands of patients already. So I'd be happy to help you get the most out of this the fastest so you can go on with your life. You want to be able to feel better and go do whatever it is that you're passionate about. And so we have to start, like, even if we start thinking about our genes.

It still brings us back to thinking about stress. Because the thing that bogs down our metabolic processes in our body, whether we're talking about the processing of methylation, which is the B vitamins, or whether we're talking about the processing of neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine, or if we're thinking about the processing of estrogen, for that matter, or the processing of adrenaline, right? Like, if you're feeling anxious and you're having trouble sleeping, like, oh, you're waking up with your mind racing, or your heart's racing and you're getting heart palpitations, this could be adrenaline, right? Those are the things adrenaline does. It makes our heart race. It makes us. That's what it's supposed to do when we're stressed. It's supposed to get our heart going and our mind working and we're sweating. And I'm feeling a bit of that now because I'm all adrenalized talking to all of you. Plus this room, by the way, is one of these old Manhattan.

Radiators where the temperature is like, I don't know, 100 and something degrees. It's kind of like a sauna based on the radiator that's even turned off. Some of you who are used to Manhattan old buildings will know what I'm talking about. So that's why I don't even. I've got my sleeveless shirt on because it's like 100 degrees in the room I'm in.

So anyway, adrenaline, that's what it does. It gets our heart racing or gets our mind racing, it burns through our adrenaline. You know, we're making more adrenaline and we're burning through it. And so if you're feeling that all the time, even when you're not stressed, you know, you're like, oh, my gosh, I feel like my heart's racing and I'm anxious all the time. It says to me, you might have a high adrenaline all the time, even when you're not stressed. And so if that's happening. Then we know your pathways, your metabolic pathways that process adrenaline, your pathways that are processing adrenaline like comt called an mao. These pathways are bogged down. Now, what causes our metabolic pathways to get bogged down? Stress, like emotional stress, physical stress, chemicals as stress, toxins in the air and our water and our furniture on our personal care products. It's also bogged down by alcohol, sugar, or imbalanced blood sugar levels. If your blood sugars are high and low and high and low, it causes inflammation in the body that slows down all your metabolic processes. So that's why, yes, we have the stress in the world around us, but the stress within our body also causes an issue. Right? So imbalanced blood sugar levels are an issue. Not getting enough sleep is an issue. Consuming alcohol or consuming foods that are inflammatory to your body, like, say, if gluten or dairy are inflammatory to your body. This inflammation from our foods that comes through our digestion, then we get leaky gut. And the leaky gut allows this inflammation to go traveling through your body. Plus, the bacteria we've talked about in prior days here, we talked about how the gut bacteria get out of balance. Then these gut bacteria are overgrowing. They're producing all these toxins. They're spewing out toxins into the body called lps. These toxins and inflammation that are coming from your gut end up slowing down all the metabolic processes in the body. So you're more likely to have a high adrenaline, you're more likely to have high estrogen, you're more likely to have, you know, low serotonin, more likely to have.

Health issues developing. That's why the fatigue happens, why the sleep issues happen, why the anxiety happens, why the weight gain happens, even. I was talking to a patient today with. She has bone loss, you know, osteopenia or osteoporosis. That's related to these same things. Dementia is related to the same things.

So this is why, to me, the symptoms or the health issues are really the signals that our bodies are stressed. Yes, we can go be active against these specific health issues. We can take specific nutrients and do specific exercise to help the bones and prevent bone loss. Yes, we can do certain nutrients, herbs and activities to help prevent memory loss. Yes, we can do that. Yes, we can. But the way we do that most effectively is to step back and say, hey, let's do stress recovery. Let's get rid of the stresses. We don't need. We don't need certain foods that are stressful. We don't need Sugar, maybe you want to have a little bit of alcohol. A patient today was like, I'm going to college. Can I have a little bit of alcohol? And I just. We had just gotten her food sensitivity results back a month ago. She came in to see me because she was depressed. She was depressed, anxious, not sleeping and tired. And she had this break from college. We did her results and it shows her gluten sensitivity is like off the charts. So she's been busy eliminating gluten from her diet and working on healing her leaky gut while also getting all her self care back on track. I'm so proud of her because now she's going back to school again in a week and it's like a different person. You know when someone has like a space of time like that where they can really focus and she's like, she's like, listen, I don't want to be relying on a bunch of different medications. I want to get my body back. And so that's what we did. And she changed her diet and she's decreased her inflammation. We healed her. She did a stool test and we found the imbalanced gut bacteria. We fixed that. I talked to her today. She's like, the bloating's gone. My digestion feels great.

We did a test to measure her serotonin and her adrenaline levels. Her serotonin was way down and her adrenaline was low and her cortisol was low. That means her adrenals were completely depleted. Now, of course the adrenals get depleted in a college student, right? Like she's a high achieving college student who was a high achieving high school student before that. So of course she's got depleted and she has hbv, positive hsv. These viruses become active because we're depleted and because we're stressed. Another patient I talked to today.

Through college, master's degree, PhD. Of course the adrenals get depleted. We were talking about how essentially everyone, I mean really everyone, anyone who's listening, but especially if you like, it makes sense. If a person goes through all of these training programs, you're expecting a lot of yourself, training all hours, final exams, writing papers for years. Of course our adrenals are going to get depleted. Of course the neurotransmitters are going to get depleted. Of course the gut bacteria is going to be thrown off track and leaky gut is going to develop. It makes sense to me that every student needs to go through stress recovery so that they can actually keep doing their work or when they graduate, be able to be successful in their new career. But I would say that's the same for all of us. Right? Like, even if you're not a college student right now, you could probably relate to that, right? Like, you could probably relate that you're doing the equivalent. You're probably as a parent, you're getting up every day, trying to help your child to get dressed and eat and learn, and you're trying to get through your job every day. Right. You probably have like all the stuff on your to do list that you're supposed to get done. And we, it's like, you know, it'd be equivalent to the amount of stress a college student has. But the thing is, in the stress research, a lot of times they study students because students are such a classic example of stress. They also study nurses because nurses are on the night shift and that's a lot of stress to be on the night shift, up all night, working hard, helping people. As a caregiver, that gets researched a lot in stress. But I would say we all have equivalent or more stress in some cases. If you're trying to be a caregiver to your children or your parents and at the same time you're trying to take care of yourself, of course we're going to get depleted. Of course our cortisol and adrenaline is going to get thrown off track. Of course the neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine are going to drop. Of course leaky gut's going to develop. You know, it's like so, like a lot of times I think sometimes we feel like, oh, am I broken? Is there something wrong with me? You know, right. Like I hear those words from people, you know, like, am I ever going to get fixed? Feels like I've been, you know, broken and feel like I can never recover. And I can understand it because in our regular medical system they don't address this stuff. So of course you're left feeling like there's no way to recover. Of course you're left feeling that way. You know, it's not because the medical system isn't built to help with this. Another person today was asking me, you know, or commenting on one of my posts and saying, you know, that she had a blood test for cortisol and it was high, I think is what she said. And so then the conventional medical approach to a high cortisol in the blood would be to do a 24 hour urine test where what they do is they collect every time you pee for 24 hours. They put it all into one big container. But now your cortisol is. That's going to give you an average of your cortisol, but it's not going to tell you what is your cortisol doing through the day. Remember, cortisol is not a static hormone. Cortisol is the only hormone that should be high in the morning when you wake up. So it should be higher, like, you know, say 6, 7, 8am when you wake up. And then it should do kind of what they call a cortisol awakening response. So it should actually, in that first hour that you wake up, go up even a little higher and then gradually down through the day, lowest at night. So if we only test it when you have your blood drawn in the morning, or if we test it and we put it all into one container, it's not going to show us what your cortisol is up to. It's just not. It's not going to tell us about adrenal distress. It's going to tell us, like, no wonder the results come back normal a lot of times. But also remember that most doctors and especially endocrinologists, they don't pay. They're not paying attention to adrenal distress. I mean, I wish they were. I think they should. Those studies have existed for, you know, probably at least 80 years since Hans Selye was researching this. So it should be part of the medical system, but it's just not. So you have to remember that if you go to see most endocrinologists, they're only going to pay attention if your cortisol is way on the ground, like zero or way up high. But what I can also tell you is then they'll give you a diagnosis. They'll either say you have Cushing's or Addison's, but they don't really have much treatment options for you. I see patients all the time who have Cushing's and Addison's. And with Addison's, the doctor can prescribe hydrocortisone to fill in for your cortisol levels, but that's about it. They don't have any other treatment options. With Cushing's disease, they can look for a tumor and potentially remove the tumor, but that's kind of the end. They don't do this in between. They're not thinking about how to help your adrenal glands recover from stress. It's not even in the endocrinology textbooks. I just want you to know that because when you're going into a doctor, you have to kind of have clear expectations to know what's even on their radar, what's even in their toolbox. And so yes, I'm not telling you not to go in. Do have these tests done. Follow what the doctor tells you. But also know that if you don't feel well, if you feel fatigue, if you have anxiety, if you're not sleeping good, if you know that there's something up with your body, but it's maybe in this middle range, it's not, maybe it's not Cushing's or Addison's, but it's in this middle that I call adrenal distress where maybe the cortisol is a little too high at the wrong time of day or a little too low at the wrong time of day. The way to solve that is what I specialize in. That's what I've learned how to do. And it's a process. It's not just a quick fix. I mean, believe me, if there was a quick fix, I would tell you. If I was like, oh, just do this one thing, take this one pill and it'll all be solved. I would tell you. I would tell you. Believe me, I've tried most everything. I would tell you. If it was going to fix it like that, I would. It's just the hard answer is that it takes taking care of yourself. You know, first of all, which is why I emphasize self care in this stress reset and why I built a whole program about self care essentials. Because it's the care, it's the care for yourself that's going to help your adrenals heal, help your digestion heal and help your. So your body can make more, your body can make more neurotransmitters, your body can make serotonin, your body can make adrenaline, your body can make hormones, your body can make melatonin. That's what our bodies are built to do. Your body can do that. I mean, unless you know these rare examples where you know some, some other reason. But for the most part your body can do these things. It just needs the right environment and the right nutrients and the right support and it can do it again. Even if it's like really drop down low like I was going to show you. I don't know exactly how. The best way is that I could show you some of my test results so you can really see like I want you, I'm so visual that I'm sure some of you are visual too. And to be able to see some of this stuff might be helpful so you can like really understand what I'm talking About. Although I don't really know how easy it is for me to, to be able to show this on a video. But I can try. Let me see if I put my. Because here's the thing is these tests exist. You know, there are tests for cortisol where it measures it at different times of day. You're there. We can do this in urine or saliva. So if you do a urine sample or saliva sample, morning, midday, evening, bedtime, you're going to know then what your cortisol is up to and you're going to know then how to support it. Because it's different things. If your cortisol is too high, we're going to use different herbs and nutrients than if your cortisol is too low. So we need to know where it is so that we know the appropriate treatment. Right. And we need to know what time of day. So if your cortisol is too high in the morning, we're going to take your doses at different times than if your cortisol is too high at night. Same thing with adrenaline. If your adrenaline too high, it's going to be a different treatment than if your adrenaline is too low. So it doesn't really work to just take a general product. You need to know what's going on in your body first and then we can do the right treatments. But not only that, but there's a specific sequence. Even if, say you know your cortisol levels are low, let's say, and you know your adrenaline's high and maybe you know your serotonin, you can also measure serotonin, dopamine, all of this in urine levels. So say you have that information but you just start implementing it all at once or any old order.

You'Re likely to feel worse even because the body doesn't integrate in that way. You know what we need to do because you're in a stressed body, if you make too many changes at once or in the wrong order, it's going to be more stress. Right? So you don't want to. If you just stress a stressed body, it means more stress. We have to do it in a non stressful way, you know, we have to integrate in a non stressful way so that it becomes part of the norm, so that it becomes integrated into your whole system. We need to do it in such a way where it just becomes you without rocking the boat and throwing you into more stress. That's the way I think about it anyway. So the key is how to integrate stress recovery in a non stressful way. And what I can tell you is it starts with, first of all, establishing somewhat of a self care routine. Even if you're just starting with self care, like this week in the stress reset, we're just starting on self care, I'm hoping, and I'm going to check in with you guys in a minute, I'm hoping that you're starting to get a feel for what it's like to have a little bit more self care in your schedule. Because the more you integrate self care and the more you understand it and you work through the kinks. That's why in this self care essentials program, we keep going with specifically what do you need to do each week to get further integrated with your clean eating, with your adequate sleep, with your reducing stress activities, with your exercise? Like, let's get these things integrated so it's just part of your normal routine. And then from there we can really systematically start to reduce the stress. We need to get your blood sugar levels balanced. And this is, you know, again, in the beginning, if you look at I can give you guys the link or if you click on to see the self care essentials program while we're establishing care, we're also getting your blood sugar levels balanced because it's so common even some of you may not realize you have imbalanced blood sugar. And I'm going to tell you what tests to do so you can check out if you have imbalanced blood sugar levels. But I would say most everyone can benefit from optimizing your blood sugar levels. So we have to start there. We have to get the blood sugar levels nice and balanced. I mean, the blood sugar is always going to fluctuate a little bit up and a little bit down. But we want to be basically on like the kiddie roller coaster, not on the loop de loop roller coaster. We want to be just having a nice up and down on your blood sugar levels because this is essentially like a stress signal to the body. If we have a huge stress signal happening with your blood sugar, it's going to work against us. We have to get out of stress mode first, is what I'm saying. So we have to calm down the blood sugar, we need to calm down the inflammation, which is why the self care essentials program is helping you to do that, helping you to eliminate the foods in your diet that are inflammatory. We start with gluten and dairy because of the most too common foods that are inflammatory. But we also do a food sensitivity test so that we can see exactly for you what other foods are inflammatory. Is it bananas? Is it almonds? Is it, you know, avocados? Like there's healthy foods that could be inflammatory to your body when you have leaky gut. So we need to see that and be able to shift your diet so that you're having the least stress and least inflammation in your diet. This way all these metabolic processes start working better. Leaky gut can heal. And we're not constantly triggering more cortisol and adrenaline. We're actually trying to break those patterns. Right. And to break patterns, probably many of you can relate, right? If you just try to break a pattern for a day or even for a week, it's likely you're going to revert back to the old way of being again, right? So we need to be able to change this pattern in such a way where it maintains. Right. So that you can become resilient to stress going forward.

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 and 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 seven 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 path to wholeness in your body. Get your plan now for free@drdonnie.com.

I was saying this earlier today to a patient. I thought of this idea where if you find yourself in the hole, right, like everything is out of balance or depleted, the hormones are low, the adrenaline is low, the neurotransmitters are low, or even if some of those things are elevated, high adrenaline or high cortisol, we need to get you out of that hole and get you back to balance. And that's possible to do using self care and rebalancing with nutrients and herbs, which is what I guide you to do. So we get things recovered. One, that's phase two. What I call phase two is getting everything rebalanced and recovered. Then phase three becomes all about resilience, becoming resilient to stress. How do you maintain over time because again, we can anticipate that we're going to all be stressed again and again. Hopefully not as much as we were in 2020, but there's probably going to be some other stress that comes along, right? There's so many things we can't control. We can't control when we might lose a family member or a pet. These things happen. Or even lose pregnancy. Maybe some of you had pregnancy loss or maybe loss of a job or moving from one house to another home, or losing a relationship, like in a divorce or separation. These things happen. But it's a matter of taking care of yourself in such a way that when these changes occur, you're resilient and you can process in the moment, process the stress in the moment, and be able to then move on successfully without it having to turn on genes you didn't want to turn on, like autoimmunity or allergies or, you know, other gene heart disease risk, cancer risk. You know, we don't. We want to try to actually turn off those gene expressions. And that's another really cool thing that would be considered epigenetics is the ability to actually turn off gene expression for genes we don't want. Right. What if we could turn off gene expression for autoimmunity or cancer or dementia? That would be pretty awesome. And so the way to do that is this same protocol of getting out of stress mode, rebalancing using nutrients, herbs and self care, and then becoming resilient moving forward. And so this is why I have developed this stress. I call it Stress Warrior. Stress Warrior is the name of a book I wrote a couple years ago with this concept that we need to become resilient and able to. I almost wonder if it could be like, I think of it more like say karate or Jiu jitsu, where you have this mastery of the ability to be centered and caring for yourself, but also resilient, you know, without so much, you know, it's not so much of this. It's not like we're trying to battle stress. You'll notice I don't tend to use words like combat or fight, you know, because to me, when we're using that terminology, it's more stress inducing, right? It's like you can become adrenalized just by the language we use. So I try to really be mindful of that. So it's more like as a stress warrior, it's more a matter of being this kind of like, you know, peaceful warrior of resilience, of becoming, of understanding your world, understanding your body understanding your needs for self care in order to be resilient in the worlds we live in. That's my vision of a stress warrior. I really want to, as we're now on day seven of this stress reset, I really want to help you to create your vision for your health.

I'll post a handout for you to guide you in the Facebook group or if any of you are listening outside of the Facebook group. If you'd like the handout, just send me a message and I'll send you a link to it. But it would be a handout to guide you create your vision for your health. Where.

Just from this conversation, I'm hoping from listening to me, you can see that it's possible. It's possible for your adrenals to recover. It's possible for your neurotransmitters to rebalance to, you know, your serotonin to come to optimal, your dopamine to be optimal. This is all possible. I see it all the time and I see it in it for myself.

It's possible to recover and to be healthy. It's just a matter of wanting it, of choosing it is part of it. So is that part of your vision for yourself? Is your vision for your health involve being resilient to stress? Being able to prevent gene expression from turning on and increasing your risk? Is that part of your vision? Is it something where you're wanting to choose this every day? Is it where you're wanting to wake up and be like, the first thing I'm going to do is a meditation and gratitude practice and then I'm going to have a protein shake and I'm going to.

Do my exercise. Is health important enough to you that you want to choose this way of taking care of yourself? Because that's a lot of what it comes down to, right? Because when we wake up in the morning, we have many choices. We can choose to just go running off, doing whatever else, you know, comes our way, right? If we don't have a clear intention, probably we'll be pulled in one direction or another. You know, someone's going to be like, oh, you need to do this, you know, or you got a race to your job or you've got to race to take care of someone else that you're a caretaker for, you know, so you can get pulled in a million directions. It is really up to you if you are going to say no. I am prioritizing my health. My vision is to be resilient to health, resilient to stress, and to help My body recover from stress. If that is your vision, then I can guide you. I can guide you there. We can do that very efficiently. In the stress warriors self care essentials program there's actually includes one on one session with me. So you get one on one time with me and you get me in video sessions weekly plus all the other support of the community to help you really stay on track to this is over the first eight weeks. In eight weeks, just imagine, I mean if this stress reset was seven days so far, imagine what could happen in eight weeks of this. Eight weeks of putting your focus on your body, your self care, your stress recovery, a lot can change, a lot can happen. And then from there we gather enough information for you to know what you need next. Because each of you is going to be individual. Some of you, eight weeks, you might be like, okay, that was all I needed. I am to resiliency mode already and there might be others of you, there may be others of you where it may be you need to. Then you might realize, okay, now I need to do some more rebalancing and you might need another period of time after that too. So I like to start with eight weeks because this gives us a chance to really meet everyone where you are and really get, you know, no matter where you're starting from, get you on this path through these three phases of stress recovery and then you can evaluate at the eight week mark. Eight weeks, what do I need next?

Is it about resilience? Is it that you need some more rebalancing? Then you can go on from there and choose. But I think this a lot can change in eight weeks of stress recovery. And that's what is in the curriculum of this self care essentials program. I wanted to say, let's see, even though today is day seven of the stress reset, I'm planning to do videos for the next two days at 4pm this is going to be actually maybe what I can do because I've been wanting to show you some of my test results because I want you to be able to really objectively see what it looks like when you do a food sensitivity panel. What does it look like when you measure cortisol? I'm going to show you some of my test results so you can really get a visual on that. So if you join me tomorrow, Monday 4pm and then on Tuesday at 4pm and I'm happy to of course answer any questions or if some of you are missing any of these handouts I've been referring to, like how to create Your self care routine handout and how to create your health vision handout, just message me because I can or my assistant can get them for you. And if you're really wondering about the self care essentials program and whether it's a good fit for you, please set up a time to talk to me because over the next couple days I'm making myself available to connect with those of you who are interested in thinking about it so that I can really understand where you're starting from and help you to make a decision about whether this eight week program is a good fit for where you are or if maybe if there's, if there's something else that makes more sense in your situation, I'll let you know. And those are free. Like a free say 10, 15 minute phone call. You can set those up through. If you go to the website page for the self care essentials program, you're going to see where it says set up a get to know you call and it'll go right into my calendar and let you set that up. Or if there, if you need a different time, just tell us because then we can find another time again. I'll share with you again that link. Or just message me if you're, if you can't find it or you're wanting more information, message me and I can get that for you. Because I just feel like here we are in January already, January 17th and 2021, and we have such an awareness for stress and how it's affecting us. And I've been developing these tools and techniques for over 20 years. So I have it here for you. And I created the program approach because this way.

It'S condensed and you get community support and.

You can implement it in a really efficient way. I also of course always have option to meet with me one on one. So that's also an option if you prefer that. But I think that, you know, some of you, I've found with other programs I've done that it can be really helpful to be able to do it in a sort of a group program approach which is also all done from home. You can do the whole thing from your home. You don't have to go anywhere. Even the food sensitivity test is a finger poke. So you can do it from home. You don't have to be, you know, going anywhere to be able to do, to access this program and you could access it from anywhere in the world. Other programs that I do, I'm so happy to say that I have people from around the world who connect with Me, and I've had a virtual practice, by the way, for over 15 years. This has been, this is not new to me. I've always worked with phone, video and online programs over the years. So for my office, this is just our usual way of doing things. Because I've always wanted to be able to reach people outside of, you know, doesn't matter where I'm located. I want to be able to help you where you're located. So. So that's what's more important to me. And that's why I'm always also researching and learning and testing myself in writing and talking and interviewing colleagues. Because this is just something I feel so strongly about, that once I have this information, I feel like it's my service, in my job to share it. Like the fact that I can see how stress affects us as humans and how to systematically help humans recover from stress. If I just keep that to myself, what's the point of that? Like, I want to be able to share that information with all of you. I feel that's my purpose is to share that information with each of you and to find ways to guide you how to benefit from that information. So you know, those of you who are just getting to know me to understand that that's what motivates me. That's what, that's what I love live for. That's what makes me feel inspired each day, is the idea that I can help you change your health for your future. Not just in your short term, for future. I mean, we can. There's a lot we can do in the short term, like being able to prevent recurrent infections, being able to improve your energy and your mood and your focus and your sleep. But also by doing that, we're preventing diabetes and cancer and dementia. We want to extend, make your life your quality of life for as long as possible. That's what they call longevity.

That's what I'm into. That's what I'm inspired by, and that's what I'm hoping to create for myself. But in the process, I want to share with you so you can create that for yourself too. To me, it's all about you feeling empowered for your own health. I'm here to be your teacher, your guide. I mean, yes, I'm a naturopathic doctor with all this education and credentials, but I'm not here to just tell you what to do. I'm here to teach you how to do it yourself. Because I believe that it's when you understand your own body and you understand why you're doing each thing you're doing and the benefit that it has to to you that it has more of a positive effect. Like it's not just about you following steps on a piece of paper. Swallow this, do this. You know, it's not just about you following instructions. Probably all of you can do that really well because we're all trained to follow instructions. It's not just about following instructions. I believe it's about you really experiencing it, really understanding your body and what it needs and experiment, experiencing what signals your body's giving you. I'm really integrating it at that deeper level. Right. Like I want you to be able to learn how to run your own body and what it needs. It's, it's. We don't come with an instruction manual so we have to figure it out for ourselves. And the more you understand your body, yourself and what it needs and how it responds, then that's when you can actually shift your future of your health because then you're not relying. I don't want you to be reliant on me. I know a lot of times you'll hear from people who, you know, you almost have to become reliant on them for information. I don't want you to be reliant on me. I want to teach you so that you don't have to be reliant on me, that you can go off. You'll know exactly what your body needs at any moment in time. You'll know what to come back to that works for you and you'll be able to keep doing that, you know, and then maybe you come back only if something comes up that you get stuck. And then I can give you some more guidance to get through it. But I don't want you to be reliant on me. I want you to be reliant on yourself, to be self empowered with information that allows you to solve your health all the time in the moment, going forward into the future. So that's, you know, that's what I'm about, is about, is about providing information to help you to do that. And I know that there's so much information out there. I read it too. I read, you know, on social media posts and I listen to lectures all the time. I hear it too, and I learn from it. But I also see that sometimes the thing that's lacking is a systematic approach that's actually going to work and work for most people and in a way that empowers you to be able to maintain it over time. That's what I see as missing. And I'm the kind of person where I see what's missing and then I figure it out, I go, okay, how do we solve that? How do we actually solve this to where it's individualized to each person but it's actually still can work because we're all human. So we can understand our physiology, we can understand our genetics, we can understand how stress affects us and we can understand how to solve that.

Anyway, you guys got it. I think those of you who are following the stress reset tips and those of you who aren't, by the way, please, you can still sign up on there's a link for the stress reset and it will email you each day with some self care tips. So you'll get seven days worth of stress reset care tips. And what happens there is we, and this is what we continue in the self care essentials program is a daily check in on what I call care C for clean eating, A for adequate sleep, R for reducing stress activities, and E for exercise. So each day we want to check in on how's your self care doing. And that's what the self care routine handout helps you do. But also with this, you know, with this video, those of you who are, you know, you're doing this, let's check in. How was your, how was your clean eating going today? Which by the way, there's a great question about what to have for breakfast and I want to make sure we cover that today. I posted in the Facebook group about my protein shake. I have a protein shake every day. I used to hate protein shakes. I was a person who just, I don't know why, for many years I just hated protein shakes. But then I figured out that as a nutritionist, I was originally trained as a nutritionist. I'm thinking through how do you get protein in a quick and easy way that's also gluten free, sugar free, dairy free? How can you do that? And there are ways to do that. But a protein shake makes it really quick and easy. And so I use a protein shake when I'm, you know, that's my first meal of the day. Which if you're doing intermittent fasting that could, you know, whatever time that is, if that's at 10am, 11am, whatever time, a protein shake can be really great because you can get that protein. I use pea protein and I have a pea protein shake powder that I use that has is sweetened with stevia, not sugar. And so I use my pea protein either in vanilla or chocolate. And I don't make a huge shake. I make like a four ounce shake. Because some of you have heard me say if you have too much to eat and your stomach's full, you can't digest it or absorb it. All better to have a small amount that you can actually digest and absorb. So I have about 4 ounces. I make it in water, filtered water, because I don't want more calories or sweeteners or other stuff that's in different kinds of milk. I just want it in water. So I put mine in filtered water. You can use like an unsweetened, you know, say almond milk or cashew milk or something if you prefer. But I just make mine in filtered water. And then I add in a couple things. I always add leaky gut support powder. That's one of my products, leaky gut support powder. Because I know that I'm under stress. Even as someone who's constantly thinking about stress. Our world is surrounded by stress. So I feel like all of us need to be protecting ourselves from leaky gut all the time. So I always put leaky gut support powder in my shake. And I put collagen support powder. I have also a collagen support product.

And these products, by the way, you can find if you go to my website, which is drdonnie.com or drdonniestore.com and so I put in the collagen support because I need the collagen for my joints and.

And for protein, more protein. And then I add proberry liquid, which is a berry extract. Yes, you could use actual berries, but I have a history of all kinds of digestive issues, including fructose intolerance. So I can't have a bunch of fruit. It's just going to make me feel awful because my digestion can't digest at all. So what I do is I have a teaspoon of proberry, which is a berry extract. I put that in the shake again. Then you can get the good stuff from the berries without having a whole bunch of fruit that's gonna be too much for your digestion. And then I put flax oil in my shake. You can use different kinds of oil. You could use coconut oil, MCT oil. I like flaxseed oil. I've seen it make huge difference in my health over the years. And it's mostly omega 6, but I also take separately omega 3s. So I have omega 6 in my shake and I take omega 3 separately.

The flax oil gives you fat. So whenever you're thinking of a meal, even a protein Shake. I encourage you to think, where's the protein? Where's the fat? Where's the carbs? Right? So I would get protein from the protein powder and the collagen powder. I get carbs from the berries and I'm trying to think they're probably a little bit in the protein powder. And I get fat from the flaxseed oil. So it's a complete meal in a protein shake. And then when I'm drinking down my 4 ounces of protein shake, I swallow my adrenal support. Because as I'm going to show you guys in my lab results tomorrow, I tend to have low cortisol. So I need to take herbs and nutrients that help my adrenal glands make more cortisol. So I take those when I'm swallowing my shake. And I take also I can show you guys if you want what I take. I also take the fish oils I'm talking about. And I take, I've been taking a product to help with telomeres and I've been taking a product that depending on the day, if I feel like I need a little bit of antihistamine or a little bit of immune support or I might choose a couple, or I take something to help with detoxification of estrogen. So I'll pick an additional product and I swallow them with my shake. So as I'm swallowing the protein shake, I'm swallowing my supplements and that's my beginning of my day. So I can share a picture of those. I already shared it in the Facebook group, so you can see. But I find that's a great kind of breakfast for me. I don't so much go for what would be considered a regular breakfast. Because the thing is, a standard American breakfast is mostly gluten, dairy, eggs. Eggs is the third most common food sensitivity. So if you're having gluten, dairy and eggs every day for breakfast and it's all kinds of inflammation, of course you're not going to feel good. You're eating all the stuff that makes you feel worse. So we need to swap out that breakfast. And if you really don't like protein shakes or you want a different breakfast option, what I sometimes would do is, and I think I posted about this too, sometimes I do a grain free, gluten free granola. So it's going to have like nuts and seeds in it. And then I do that with frozen wild blueberries for the carbs, right? And I put you can either get almond or cashew yogurt like and I don't put the whole container, I use like 1 or 2 tablespoons of yogurt if I'm going to do kind of like a granola breakfast. Or you can also, if you're trying to get protein also from breakfast, other than a protein shake, you could do like turkey bacon, turkey sausage, or a lot of times I'll do kind of like a mash. I guess they would call it a mash where you use sometimes leftovers. Like it could be leftover potato rice or quinoa. And then you put that either with say turkey bacon. Or if you want to be vegan, you could do nuts and seeds. You can also make nuts and seeds as a almost like an oatmeal, but instead of being from grains, it's from nuts. By the way, there's a way to do that where you grind the nuts. I can post about that if you guys are interested in nut kind of a nut cereal, except it has no grains in it and you just put hot water, but it becomes like the consistency of cereal, but it's just nuts and water. Then you could add the frozen wild blueberries to that. That's another awesome breakfast. But what I was talking about before is more like a mash. Or what my daughter loves is soup. I'll make, say, free range chicken soup with bone broth. And you know, depending. She doesn't like very much in her soup, but we might put onion, carrots, celery, or you could put shiitake mushrooms in the soup. Soup is a great breakfast, especially in the winter because it's warm, it gives you protein, healthy fats and carbs from the vegetables. So if some of you are like, what am I supposed to have for breakfast? I'm much more likely to say, make a soup. You can have leftovers from dinner. One of my favorite other breakfasts is leftover wild salmon with like, say, greens. I'm thinking like spinach or kale. That can be a great breakfast. Or you could make a mash. You could put say leftover sweet potatoes or white potatoes with leftover salmon and kind of mash it into a sauce in a skillet. Oh my gosh. I know it sounds weird, but it's really good. So I'm working on these recipes, by the way, for my new book that's coming out in about six to eight months. It's going to have some of these, my favorite recipes in there. So you guys are inspiring me. I need to actually write it down. I tend to be some of you may be like me, where you just kind of cook and you don't really pay attention to exactly the amounts. But when I turn it into a recipe, I gotta give you some amount so you know how to replicate it. So I'm working on that. So anyway, so these are some breakfast ideas for you. But it's just. You see what I mean, like care, clean eating, adequate sleep, reducing stress and exercise is a practice. Every day you just, every day you wake up and you go, okay, what am I going to eat today that's going to be anti inflammatory in helping my body recover from stress? You're going to go for protein fats and healthy carbs in a nice balance with each other. Unless you're doing a ketogenic diet, in which case you've got to do a lot more fat.

And then you're going to make sure you get to bed so you can get at least seven and a half to nine hours of sleep, which I did last night by the way. Those of you who are tracking with me. I think I went to bed at midnight. I woke up about 8 o', clock, so that's eight hours. I did not wake up in between. Oh my gosh, it was so delicious to be able to get that much sleep. I love it. And then with your reducing stress activities, these are everything from deep breathing like we've talked about throughout the day before you eat to trigger the vagal nerve to signal your parasympathetic nervous system, to meditation, mindfulness, journaling.

Taking a walk in nature, anything that you can do that just signals to your brain, anti stress and then exercise. Which my exercise for today is ballroom dancing because I'm headed out now, I'm gonna head out from my office over to the ballroom dancing studio, Arthur Murray studio in Manhattan. And they have a whole boot camp going all weekend. But I'm just going for this afternoon and this evening for a master class in dance. And then like an evening, I'm not sure they have a name for it, evening of all different kinds of dances. I'm really looking forward to it. I'll post whatever I can. If I can take a picture or video, I'll post it for you so you can be inspired by the dancing. But it's such amazing exercise, I can't even tell you. Like, the great thing is it's fun. So you're so distracted with having fun dancing, next thing you know your heart's working and you're having a good workout. So dance is one of my favorite forms of exercise. There's also Pilates, which I'm going to Post also about my Pilates, probably tomorrow. So if you want to watch for that, I'll share with you about Pilates. And I posted also about one of my favorite YouTube workouts. So, you know, you're just a matter of trying lots of different kinds of exercise. You don't want to do the same thing all the time. You want to do different kinds of exercise and especially make sure you're getting in the strengthening, not just the aerobic exercise. You know, make sure you get some strengthening to happen too, because it's the strong muscles that help you keep your blood sugar balanced and keep your growth hormone stimulated and keep your body healing. So you want to do some amount of strength training, not overdoing the strength training, of course, because that could be also stressful. That's why you got to learn to listen to your body and do just the amount that's right for you at this point in time. Go do something for yourself and think about what is your vision for your health in the future? You know it's possible, right? It can feel impossible. I know, I get it. Because life is overwhelming, but I can tell you it's possible. So just by knowing that it's possible to prioritize your health, what does that look like for you? What do you really want? What would you like to experience in your body? How would you like to feel? Allow yourself to just ask yourself that question. I know it's scary sometimes because we're so used to not feeling good and thinking it's not possible to feel better, that it can feel a little scary to actually think about, how would I want to feel? Right? Because then you might feel disappointed about the way you currently feel. But it's okay. Just know that you. You don't have to be hard on yourself. You don't have to feel disappointed. You can just have a realization where you go, okay, the way I feel now is not exactly what I would like to experience. I would like to experience something different in my life and different in the way experience my body. And once you register that, once you kind of go, I would like to feel something different, then you can choose to feel excited about that. You can choose to lean in and let your. Let that guide you, let that pull you forward. You see what I mean? Like, I get that it's a little scary because you're like, but how am I going to get there? How's that going to happen? I don't want to feel hard on myself. I don't want to feel disappointed. I. But if you just let all that go, and you just go, what would I, if I could feel any way, if my health could be any way that I would want it to be, what would that be? And just write it down and come back and tell me, yes, tomorrow, like what, what is it that you really want for your health in your life? And then let's lean into that and start to see what comes up. Because you might have some fears come up or whatever. Whatever comes up, that's okay. Because we can work through it. We can work through the fears, we can work through the frustrations, we can work through the I don't know how to get there part. We can work through that. It's just first we have to realize what do you actually want to achieve? Then I can help you through the next steps to get there. All right, talk to you guys soon. Thanks for joining me.

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