Latest / Inside the Apothecary / #Ep03 - The Nervous System And Stress
Transcript
- MG Herbs: Welcome to episode number three, where we're going to talk about all things nervous system and stress. We are going to look at why regulation, feeling safe within your body and rest are absolutely essential for healing. So we're going to explore, I guess, why the nervous system and creating this zone of safety is really important for us to be able to affect change in our patients. Yeah. Where do you want to start? Will we talk about fight or flight? Everyone talks about fight or flight. Thank you so much for being here with us today. If something in this episode resonated, just know there's always a way to explore it further and support your body the way it needs. You can find out more by going to the website nourishingapothecary.com or reach out if you're ready for more personalized care. Until next time, take care of yourself and keep listening to your body. I've been there as a mom, I've experienced that severe fatigue. I've had that afternoon slump, especially having endo. That fatigue can hit you at any point, right? And I'm no good. I'm no good. I'm no fun. can't do any, like the quality time is not there with the kids. So I know if I sit down and eat breakfast with them in the morning, I'm gonna be more efficient. I'm gonna be able to enjoy my time with them more. I'm gonna have a better day. And that's the case, you know, every single day. And I do have to really tell myself like, Hey beautiful, I am so glad that you're here. Welcome to Inside the Apothecary, a space for real conversations about hormones, fertility and the body. This is where we learn to understand the body, not fight it. Wherever you in your cycle, your symptoms ⁓ or your fertility journey, you are here. We explore what's really driving your symptoms a clinical lens, but in a way that feels human. Jaime: Mm-hmm. MG Herbs: grounded and supportive because your body isn't broken, it's communicating. So take a breath, get comfortable and let's tune back into you. Jaime: everybody does. I think it's just really important to kind of bring it back and to really understand how our nervous system works. Alright, so in our central nervous system, we kind of have two different arms. One is the sympathetic nervous system state, which is that fight or flight. And then the other is the parasympathetic state, which is the rest and digest. So it's really important to understand we have those two different types. MG Herbs: Sit down, relax, take a breath, have a good meal. Your day will be better. You'll be a better mom. You'll be a better naturopath, all of those things. Mm-hmm. Jaime: Yeah. Yeah, the breakfast is a big thing. The amount of times I have that conversation with my clients, with my moms about the importance of having that breakfast for yourself. To start your day up right, it's really good for your nervous system to make sure you are actually eating and you're not running on fumes. Like you need that fuel. Oh, wow. Look, we, you can have the coffee, but have some food with it. Like, MG Herbs: Ahem. Mm-hmm. Jaime: Right now, if we go back to caveman days, the sympathetic nervous system, cave woman, cave person days, the whole point of the sympathetic nervous system state was to protect us. So if there's a tiger around and we're freaking out, we can run really quickly, right? We can run. And when that's the case and we are on full alert, you don't want to be worrying about, ⁓ my God, I got to go to sleep. ⁓ my God, I got to eat. You don't want to be focused on those things because right now it's life or death. MG Herbs: Yep. Well, we run on coffee, don't we? You kind of get up, have your coffee, go. Yes, totally. But you know, like getting school clothes, lunches, like, you're like, so now I do it at night. I do it the night before. Cause I'm, you know, I'm a bit better and I get the kids involved. We all sit down to dinner. Cape woman. Yep. Jaime: Absolutely. ⁓ MG Herbs: Mm-hmm. Jaime: Yeah. Yeah. MG Herbs: We turn all the screens off, like just little stuff like that makes such a big difference to their nervous system as well. You want to teach them how to do this. It's not just for you. Jaime: Yeah. Yeah. Right? Then the opposite side of that is that parasympathetic, that beautiful rest, and that's where we digest and that's where we should be in our most chilled state. But absolutely. And some honey if we're lucky. Mmm, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think the nervous system regulation that you can teach your kids is just so valuable to teach them how to handle their emotions and their mood and how they respond. It's just such a beautiful skill for them to be able to learn and to nurture as they get older. Going back to the food thing, the other thing I think is really interesting because I've been having this conversation with people recently. I saw this TikTok the other day and it cracked me up and this woman was saying... MG Herbs: We get a nice cave, find some blueberries. Yeah, a nice cave person to kill a beast for us. Mm-hmm. ⁓ Jaime: But the problem is in today's day and age, there's not really any bears, we're not really any tigers, but so many people are stuck in that sympathetic nervous system state and their body is still sensing that alert all the time. Right? MG Herbs: Definitely. Yeah. Jaime: It's so funny and she was saying, ⁓ I'm mid 40s and I've lost all this weight whatever and these are my tips on how I kept it off and I was like ⁓ yeah and one thing she said is we all eat too damn fast and she was like so my mental cue when I eat is put down the damn fork and I MG Herbs: So, sympathetic is we're freaking out. Parasympathetic is we are settling down. When we're in sympathetic, all of the blood's gonna go to our extremities, right? So that we can go fast and that pulls it away from the core, which is our gut, our digestion. Digesting food isn't essential for living in the short term. However, it is in the long term. So if you're kind of stuck in that sympathetic state, Mm-hmm. Jaime: Mm-hmm. Yes! ⁓ love it. Because when I suppose coming back to the mums and right and the nervous system, so many people you're in that state and you shovel in food really quickly. You're not even aware you've eaten not even aware of it. There's no recollection that there was even a meal consumed because we're so distracted so stressed. Everybody's like eating while we're working. And MG Herbs: Yeah, it's good. Mm-hmm. Jaime: No. MG Herbs: Yeah. Jaime: Absolutely. MG Herbs: Mm-hmm. What do we see? Like, you know, what does that do to our body? Jaime: I think this is one of the main reasons why so many women I see in my clinic are bloated. Right? Because so many people are just stuck with this fight or flight state all the time. And when you try and eat in that state, right, you're switching off digestion, because essentially you're giving your body the message that I am prepared to fight a battle right now, not eat. So when you try and eat, this is where you get a lot of issues and this is where bloating occurs. MG Herbs: Yes. Jaime: And so you're not digesting the food like we said, so like I've been saying to myself now as I go to eat, I'm like put down the damn fork, put down the damn fork. I love it. It is like I have to be a bit aggressive to myself with my cues, but oh my god, I'm really responding. So I'm like put down the damn fork, chew, then pick it up, have another mouthful. MG Herbs: Thank I love it. Yeah. It's good. Do you know what? It's not just digestion. What happens when you feed yourself that quick is your body can't respond. And we always talk about stress hormones, we always talk about sex hormones, but we have digestive hormones too. And they can't respond appropriately when it happens that quick because our bodies like aren't computers. We're not robots. doesn't it's not like a, you know, search search on Google search on chat, GPT response. Jaime: So like I always say to my clients, like if that's the way that you are and you're really busy or really stressed, what I feel like is no one's really paying attention to the digestion of our food these days. It's like an afterthought. Right, so what I often say to my clients is before you go to eat, if you're in that fight or flight, you just need to stop, take a couple of deep breaths and... Yes. No. No. MG Herbs: Mm-hmm. It is a slow process where your body releases specific grueling, leptin, these hormones that say, Hey, we're full. Hey, we're satiated. Hey, we've had enough. sometimes your body doesn't know you've eaten. Sometimes it can spike your insulin because of that response. Sometimes we also will eat too much before we know that we've eaten too much. And then you get the awful feeling of fullness. But like you said, the bloating is a big one. Jaime: Yeah. Yes. calm your nervous system down, which will switch you over to the calming parasympathetic rest and digest nervous system state. No. MG Herbs: so that we can then digest the food, get the nutrients out of it, because you could be eating all this beautiful food and not really being able to like, you utilize it to some extent. And then you're going to get more out of your food. You're going to be having lots of nutrients. You're going to be feeling great. Energy is going to be improved. And ideally, when like, if that cycle continues and you don't break down the food, being nutrient deficient will drive Jaime: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. For sure. I just honestly don't think we're digesting the food properly. I saw do you do you remember there was a meme that was going around a while ago and it was like my nervous system doesn't like know the difference between fighting a fire and sending an email, like fighting a battle and like sending an email or fighting a battle and like driving to work, like because the nervous system is at that level. Right and Absolutely, absolutely. MG Herbs: Mm-hmm. Thank the fight or fight as well. Cause it'd be like, okay, now there's no food. Now there's not only a tiger, we've lost our cave. There's no food available, even though you are eating, you know, and then we see the flow on effects of that hormonal imbalance, poor sleep, know, really low energy, iron issues, anemia, all that kind of stuff. ⁓ Yeah. It sounds like a messy, messy pile. Yeah. Jaime: Definitely. that's not a good place for where we've gotten to. That our nervous system for something that really shouldn't be eliciting like a life or death situation, our nervous system doesn't, tell the difference between those two. And when I heard a lot of conversations around that, I thought, you know, that just makes so much sense. But gosh, that's sad that we've got to that point. Like your goal should be parasympathetic all the time. Like and occasionally, occasionally pop into the sympathetic, right? When necessary. MG Herbs: Yeah, totally. Mm-hmm. Jaime: Yeah, I think you had a really, absolutely. And you had a really interesting point while we were talking about mums and we were talking about that like 3pm slump. Do you want to just go into that because that's really interesting to talk about and I don't think people are aware. MG Herbs: you Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I think our nervous system is like, that's kind of, it's, it's highly linked to our adrenal system, right? Our adrenals are these two little walnuts. They kind of sit on top of our kidneys and they respond to every single stress that we encounter, whether we like break a nail or whether we have car accident or something, you know, bigger happens. So if you're constantly, if your nervous system is constantly in that hypervigilant state, your adrenal glands will be put under a lot of pressure. Yeah, it's not like good and bad. It's just the percentage that we're in each. No, one's not good. One's not bad. They both serve their purpose. Like if you're going to do a really big speech, it doesn't even have to be a negative stressful event. If you're going to do a speech, you want to remember what you're going to talk on. Right. So your, ⁓ you know, your, your nervous system helps you do that with a little bit of anxiety, with a little bit of stress. Jaime: Mmm. Totally, absolutely. Yes. Absolutely. MG Herbs: It helps you stay really focused. So often people will feel a little bit tired after stuff like that. You know, they'll just, some people just feel wiped because they've used all those resources, but we cannot be like that constantly. Yeah. That's I'm tired. Just talking about it. What that means is that you may be experiencing like a constant high cortisol and cortisol is not really made to be high all the time. It's made to be high in the fight or fight for sure. We see that that that go up. see you run. Cortisol helps us. Adrenaline helps us. Long term, it's going to mess with your other hormones. And what I really commonly see in my mom's is they are sleep deprived. are nutrient deprived. They're super fatigued. Jaime: Absolutely. all the time. No, not at all. I know and talking about tiredness, I think we have to touch on sleep, right? Because this is a really big, this is a really good point as well. Right? So if you're in, right, so all the people that say to us, and there's so many of them, right, that say, am wired of a night time, right? I cannot sleep, my mind is racing. Do you want to kind of elaborate Mel, like what's going on there? MG Herbs: Yes. Yep. And they feel that at like two, three o'clock in the Arvo. So your cortisol should come up in the morning to wake you up and then stay pretty stable throughout the day and head down towards the night so that your melatonin, your sleep hormone can come up and you can sleep. If you are super fatigued in the Arvo and you push through, because we have to, we pick up the kids, we cook dinner, we do all of the mom stuff, we get everyone else to sleep and then mom can't sleep. She's super. Mm-hmm. Yeah. We're creatures that work with our environment. Humans, you know, we are synced with our environment. So when the sun goes down, our cortisol will go down and our melatonin will come up and darkness says, hey, sleep hormones, come on, we're going to go to sleep now. How often are you in darkness now? Jaime: this. It's time. MG Herbs: wired and it's like a tired and wired and that's because the cortisol is pumping because we've said, you can't sleep right now. We need to push through. You get this second wind and it's all to do with that nervous system dysregulation. And then, you know, we generally, all my moms will be like, it's a great time to clean the house. So I just pump it out. Like I just go to town on the house and then it's done for the morning. But that cycle, it's not going to be great. Jaime: you MG Herbs: Like how often do you sit in darkness or are you in darkness prior to literally turning off the light and closing your eyes before bed? We're surrounded by electricity. You know, we have this great electricity. have screens at our fingertips. We have so many disruptions to this cycle that is a natural thing. When the sun rises, that sunlight in your eyes says, Hey, melatonin, all good. You can like go have your rest. It's like a shift worker, right? Jaime: Yep. Mm-hmm. MG Herbs: You know, long-term that cycle is going to mean really poor sleep for mom. She's not going to get the hours she needs, but the quality is also not going to be there. And then we wake up in the morning, we do it all again. What we might see is that fatigue period in the RV just gets bigger and bigger and the sleep time pushes further and further away. Not a. Yeah, it's. Jaime: Yeah. Yeah. MG Herbs: And cortisol come in to wake us up, make us feel ready for our day. Not too much, just enough. And that balance ⁓ is part of our circadian rhythm. We actually don't just have one circadian rhythm. We have many in our body. So lots and lots of different clocks and they all are regulated from the sun, from light and dark. So that's a big part of jet lag when you travel because it's all messed up. So when... Jaime: Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So how do, how do, how do they get out of that then? What's the, how do we get out of that cycle? MG Herbs: It's difficult. even just what you said about breathing and, you know, having that time to ourselves, just even before we eat, we need to reset the nervous system. We need to retrain that hormonal response and we need to let our bodies know that we're safe. Hey, everything's okay. Yes, we're super, super tired, but we can fix that. What we need to do is sort the hormonal stuff out as best we can. As a ⁓ base, I think a lot of that can come from We are constantly on our screens when this cycle is not working properly, the hormonal shifts cannot happen efficiently. You will have trouble getting to sleep. You will have trouble staying asleep. You will feel terrible, you know, at different parts of the day. And it does feed into other comorbidities with your health. Jaime: Mmm. MG Herbs: women being like nutrient depleted postpartum. If we don't have everything we need, then our body is not going to be able to produce all of its sex hormones, all of its stress hormones appropriately. If we are kind of functioning on cortisol, often women will forget to eat as well, like, cause we just go, go, go. We feed our kids, we don't feed ourselves. ⁓ So yeah, we commonly see like this picture where there's a lack of sleep, there's a lack of food, there's... Jaime: Absolutely. Yeah. So what I think is really like, so that so when you're in that state, right, if you are feeling really stressed before bed, right, if you've got like, if you're already starting to put all the lists together, and you're worried about everything you've got to do the next day. MG Herbs: What would you add? Jaime: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. MG Herbs: Mm. Jaime: and you're in that fight or flight state, like we said, if that cortisol is high before bed, right, you won't sleep because if you're, if you were going to fight a battle and your cortisol was high, the whole point is it's going to stop you sleeping because you don't want to be like fighting a battle. ⁓ sorry guys, I'm a bit tired. I'm just going to go and have a little nap. No, you want to be able to push through because someone's coming to get you or you're fighting the battle. Yes. Yeah. MG Herbs: Thank You know, we're putting so much pressure on ourselves. We want to exercise as well. We want to get back, you know, get our bodies back and all that stuff. But one of the, one of the cons of all of this, and, know, I think some women would be very familiar with the fact that when you are like this, you can't shift excess weight because when your cortisol is high, we keep it on. Protective again, very protective mechanism, but not ideal in the modern world. You're not going to be able to have a nap. Jaime: But we are not doing that these days. And so this is where when that cortisol is high, you won't you will struggle to go to sleep and to wind down. So yes, it's a melatonin component, but it's a cortisol. Now, I know everybody wants to talk about cortisol and everybody thinks cortisol is the root of everything. But what I think Mel and I would both agree, it's more your nervous system. Right? We've got to like, we've got to bring it back and talk about the Yes. It is such a vicious cycle. I honestly have lost count at the amount of times I've spoken to moms that eat their food over the sink. Or like, they shovel it in in a second that they've got. And like, I understand that for sure, where you've got to that point. But then, so often, you know, the women that come and see us in the clinic, they're at a point where their body has literally broken down, and they have nothing left. MG Herbs: Mm-hmm. Thank Mm-hmm. Jaime: overarching problem is that you're probably stressed and your nervous system. It's that's what's going on. That's a dysregulation, not that you particularly have too much cortisol in itself as this one lone little guy. Yeah. ⁓ MG Herbs: You got nothing left. You burnt through that fuel like a V8 engine. You're going to go through your fuel quicker, functioning at that super crazy level. Jaime: Absolutely nothing. MG Herbs: No, it's not too much again. Yeah, it's never like a good and bad thing. Even with a diet, I have this conversation. It's a balancing act and a lot of these hormones are see-saws to each other. know, cortisol and melatonin, they're see-saws. One comes up, the other goes down. That's how it should work. Your stress and sex hormones, when stress is up, the sex hormones will be pushed down. see a lot of ⁓ fertility issues with really high stress because of that. You go on holidays, Jaime: 100 % 100 % and what you know breaks my heart, It honestly breaks my heart is so many of these women I know you're all amazing mothers and you provide these beautiful meals for your children that are so nutritionally like you work so hard on it to provide for them and then you give yourself crumbs or you have the edge of the toast or you have like the scraps. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. MG Herbs: Mm-hmm. Jaime: Thanks. MG Herbs: A little woman might happen to fall pregnant because like stress comes down. So some of the things that like, when we talk about all of this in terms of sleep, it's called, what we're talking about is like sleep hygiene at its core. And do you want to talk a little bit about that? Cause you've got some great sleep hygiene tips and it's not about being clean. It's about the routine. Yeah. Jaime: And what I try and encourage the mothers that I speak to is I just want them to start showing some of that love that they show to their children to themselves and start making themselves a priority so that you can start filling up your cup and calming down your nervous system. You know, to then be you'll be a much better mother because you've been able to show that love to yourself. Absolutely. MG Herbs: Totally. Jaime: ⁓ I am all about it. Absolutely. No, definitely not. Yeah. Firstly, if you are a mother with a child, you know how you have a wind down routine for your child to get them ready for bed. Sleep hygiene is your wind down routine, right? This is what we're talking about right now. When Mel was talking about the whole issue with melatonin and the blue light situation, right? This is where when you're seeing that blue light of a nighttime, you won't MG Herbs: I've been in that fatigue. have, you know, with having endo, you, the fatigue can be extreme and the afternoon slump kind of period. I can't do anything with the kids. There's no quality time there with them. So I know, you know, not only if I sit down and have breakfast with the kids and I eat whatever I've made for them, I'm going to be more efficient at making their lunches, at getting them ready Mm-hmm. Jaime: reduce that melatonin. So conversely, what you want to do is you want to reduce the blue light over night time. Now there's quite a few ways that you can do this. I am a big fan because I'm a lifetime insomniac. So this is my jam. Now one thing that I've done is I've converted all the lights in my apartment. So I have lamps everywhere that have a blue light blocking lens. So they're either orange or they're red. MG Herbs: Mm hmm. ⁓ Jaime: Now there's some really good companies that do this stuff. If you guys are interested, there's Baxter Blue and Block Blue Light. They've got some really good options. So like in my bedroom, I will have a lamp that has a red light globe. So of a nighttime when we're in the bed, there's a red light and so no blue light. So I know a lot of people have lamps. So what you want to do is just start creating that soft environment once the sun goes down. Right? If you do want to watch like TV and stuff of a nighttime, I'm a big fan of people actually getting ⁓ red tinted glasses to wear. So not like all these glasses have a blue light ⁓ filter on the lens, but it's still clear. I actually like the lens to be red themselves. I wear these basically as the sun goes down. So that way I'm not exposed to any blue light whatsoever. The reason why I want to do that is because naturally your body should start producing melatonin from about nine o'clock. MG Herbs: Excuse me. Mm-hmm. Jaime: Really, if we were in back in the day, this is how it should be. So really you wanna start wearing those glasses over night time so that way you're not exposed to that blue light. So lots of softness, we wanna really focus on lots of calm. So also I see it a lot. you guys wanna do work till late at night. You need to have a cutoff time, right? Where you say, I'm done and now I'm gonna spend some time winding myself down. MG Herbs: Mm-hmm. Jaime: I also have a very strict rule of no phone in the bed. No. Now, this was a big and really difficult decision for me to make and because we're all just so addicted. But what I did is I had ⁓ a transition item, which was my iPad that had no social media. I know it's so funny, but I was so bad. So, right. So my transition item on my iPad, the reason why it was a transition is there was no social media. MG Herbs: Mm-hmm. It's good. These are things that people need tips. You know, it's good. Jaime: So the worst I could do was window shop and that doesn't have the same nervous system response. I swear to God, I swear to God try and you'll see. So I had that, but then I started reading. So now I have a Kindle. So I read my book in bed. I don't really need to bring the iPad, but if I ever do bring my phone into bed randomly on Friday or Saturday night, cause I know I'm not having to get up early. ⁓ my gosh, the difference I can feel in my nervous system. It's horrible. I'm like, get the phone away from me. It suckers me in. MG Herbs: Yeah. Yeah. Jaime: It was a biggie and I'm just so glad I made that decision to really reduce the kind of exposure because you know, I am really busy and I am on my phone. I'm on TikTok responding to you guys 24 seven. So I needed to have a cutoff where I just said no. And so I don't really touch my phone from about nine 30 is usually kind of my cutoff time because what's really interesting as well. Right. So I got an aura ring recently and I wanted it to track my sleep. And what I noticed is I had slipped into a pattern of I wasn't sleeping so good again. And that's why I wanted to get the ring was to try and figure out what's going on. So what was so interesting is while I felt fine, right? On the nights when I wasn't sleeping, my body was in peak stress before I went to bed. And I was like, oh, oh, I didn't think I was stressed. I thought I was good, but no, my body was sensing stress. So I think it's really important to be to really just, I just don't think we can't underestimate how important it is to wind ourselves down. Oh, and I must just add, sorry, one of my other favorite things, because I am obsessed with that. And this is like, I need to start telling more people about this. So one of my other favorite things I did is when I looked at the lighting in my house, right, I had to think, had to think about it, right. I had soft lighting in the bedroom, soft lighting in the lounge room, but MG Herbs: Yeah. Like, yeah, go for it. Jaime: in the kitchen and the bathroom was very offensive bright light. Right. And I was like, okay, so that's not good. It's great for the makeup, but terrible for nervous system. So I saw someone again on TikTok posted in their bathroom, they had a shower lamp. And it is my it is my new favorite thing. So it's a tall, a tall little rechargeable lamp, right, that I have a little remote control for and it's waterproof. MG Herbs: Offensive. Mm. ⁓ a shower lamp. Yeah. Jaime: And so it, and it has all pretty little lights. It's beautiful. So when I have a shower over nighttime now, I have this soft, beautiful lighting. Oh my gosh. It has made it such more enjoyable, calming experience when I, you know, and so when I go clean my teeth, it's a soft, beautiful lighting as well. Same as the kitchen. And it made such a difference to my nervous system. Like these are the actionable things you can think about. MG Herbs: I love it. Yeah, I like that. Mm. Jaime: So that's why I tell all my clients, have a look in your house. Have a look, you know, just look at it from that perspective of a nighttime. MG Herbs: I think I'm... Mm-hmm. I think offensive is the perfect word. Cause you know, when you are half asleep and you turn a light on and you're like, wow, like what it does that to our insides and look vice versa for shift work. think we can't leave out the shift workers. Cause this is something that is out of their control. ⁓ it's an environmental factor. There's always things we can change and there's things that we can't let's focus on the things we can change for our shift workers. do need like block out blinds. You need to be in darkness to have a good sleep during the day and Jaime: Exactly, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yes. MG Herbs: for nighttime there, know, for daytime there, nighttime opposite, like we get them to still have that same wind down the same breakfast, the same lunch, the same dinner. say to them, do this for your morning and do this for your night. So whatever that looks like, all of this stuff is really even more important, I would say for them. Jaime: Yeah. Yes. Yeah, I agree. I agree. The shift work is really difficult. It really, really is. But yeah, how they set up that environment is just even more important. But yeah, it always just comes back to the nervous system. And I really feel like that is really important to kind of understand as well. Like, so rather than naming it as cortisol, it's what we could do for your nervous system. MG Herbs: And what can we do? Jaime: And I just want to rename that. Well, so like we said, so first of all, I think it's really important just to look at the course of your day. Right. Look at what you're doing in the day. What is your routine that you've got? Right. And I just think people are so like running. They run through the day, but no one is kind of stopping and just resetting and taking that time to chill and be present and be really mindful as well. MG Herbs: I like it. Mm. Jaime: And I just, think we're all just stuck in this mindset of busy. MG Herbs: Definitely. And we thrive on it. It gives us dopamine. So like you and I actually really thrive in stress and busyness and you know, like we got, yeah, Adari is a mentor, right? So because of that, can be a little bit addictive as well, you know, like, and then you, by the time that you realize where you're at, you're completely burnt out. And that's really what we don't want. We want to prevent you getting to burnout. Jaime: Yeah. ⁓ MG Herbs: It's, you know, I love that you said it's like the, kid, you know, retraining the sleep because it's the same when our kids burn out. You know, you see it when they're like the last week before end of term, they just got nothing left in their tank. And that's, you know, that's what we're doing as adults too. is a go, go, all term, all semester, all whatever. ⁓ and you know, when my daughter recently had, her school holidays, she was looking for her hit. of busyness. just, you know, like it wasn't there for her and she would have like she was having tantrums, which she hasn't done in years. So I think we're kind of addicted as well to that to that kind of thing. But what I love about, you know, like the the whole mom thing and the kid thing is like, let's eat what we feed our kids. Let's give ourselves the sleep wind down, the sleep routine, the sleep hygiene that we give our kids. Like, why do we do that? Why do we not? Jaime: Mm. Mmm. Yeah. MG Herbs: look after ourselves in the same way. We train, we sleep train babies, but we don't do it for ourselves, right? Like, it's like everything when we grow up and become adults, we think we're smarter, but we're not. Jaime: Mmm. Mm-hmm. I know. I just, I feel... I just feel like it's just the way society has been. It's the way moms have always thought it has to be that they need to be so selfless and they, you know, they give everything to everyone. But, and it doesn't work that way. And I just want to see more women being able to look after themselves and take care of themselves. MG Herbs: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Jaime: I just like I know with the business that you know, you and I have like, I know I've had this conversation with you before where I've said that, you know, I want us to have longevity in what we're doing. So like, we have to take breaks, we need to step away, we can't be working 24 seven, we need to try and have some of that balance. And you know, I see it. know. No, and I just I see it all the time from women and MG Herbs: Yep. No. That's not fair on anyone that we serve. Sorry, you go. Mm-hmm. Jaime: You know, I think women can go through periods of hustle and I get that, but what is not good for us is to be hustling 24 seven 365 days a year. You know, no. ⁓ see that's a really good point to mention as well. Right. So let's just, let's just talk about how when our cortisol is raised, what is the negative impact on our immune system? MG Herbs: Mm-hmm. We can't. We get sick. We get sick. Well, it's just, it's not going to work. Immune system, digestion, all of these non-essentials for life. You'll get over a cold or flu. You'll, know, your body's not like, that's not a life threatening thing. So when I was thinking of it, like, you know, just let me go full naturopath here on you for a sec. You have this like ball of light. Jaime: this. MG Herbs: within you and that ball of light is finite. It's just, know, it is what it is and it moves around your body and it sends some to your thyroid. It sends some to your brain. It moves around and does what it needs to do. You've got a really bad period. goes there to try and sort that out for you. You fall and break your leg. We're going to go and heal that. But when your nervous system needs the whole ball of light, nothing else left. Nothing else left. get sick. And your nervous system also to function at that level, it needs a lot of nutrients. So no one else is getting anything because it's greedy. Like it's taking everything. So yes. Jaime: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Absolutely. But that's the feeling, right? The feeling is you've got nothing left. The feeling is you are on empty. And I just, I feel like women, I've conditioned to think they need to be super women. And you are and you all are amazing super women, but that doesn't have to come at an expense of your health. MG Herbs: Yeah. So we've got like the sleep issues, the hormonal issues, the immune system breaking down. We've got the digestive bloating issues. Let's finish by talking about anxiety. Cause I think when we talk about nervous system, we talk about cortisol, we talk about adrenaline. We're not sleeping. We're run down. We're going to be a bit unwell mentally, I would say. ⁓ Jaime: Yeah. sure. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. What I was going to say is I think what is also really interesting to talk about from that nervous system point of view is to think about like how the words of what we say has such a big impact in how we feel. Right? So there is a huge connection to what you say and how you talk to yourself and the way your body responds to that. ⁓ And I just don't think this is talked about enough. Right. So huge. Right. This is massive. MG Herbs: So you're saying like, when we're like this, if we keep saying, I'm so anxious, I'm so anxious, I'm so anxious, that's gonna Jaime: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Or I have, yep, and same, I have anxiety. Right? The way that you say this, the is how your body will respond. Right? So that goes same as like, you know, but also same as like the negative stuff you say to yourself, right? MG Herbs: What are you telling your body, right? Like, I'm anxious. ⁓ yeah, I'm sick. I'm not pretty enough. I'm like all of that. Yeah. Jaime: Yeah, I'm not a good mom. Like I'm, you know, I'm not a good person. I'm not a good, you know, wife or partner. Right? All of that stuff. Absolutely. Right. So our body responds. MG Herbs: or not good enough. Yeah. So that inner... Yeah. So that inner dialogue. Jaime: Yeah. So this is really important in understanding the impact, right? So even just while you may be feeling in that moment, you might be feeling anxious. I think it's more important rather than going, ⁓ God, my anxiety is so bad today. Is to even just kind of be like, I'm feeling a bit anxious, but move on. move on to the next thing rather than labelling it and therefore solidifying an identity behind it is really important. MG Herbs: What about looking at like all of everything we've talked about? Right. Of course you're going to be anxious. There's no one in the world who could be in that state and not be feeling like not great, know, could be coping under those circumstances long-term. That's what we're saying, right? So yes, you may have that predisposition to feel anxious, but look at why, like what if we got your back in balance? Jaime: Yeah. Yeah. MG Herbs: What if we made sure that you had enough nutrients to create your neurotransmitters? And please, we are not trying to in any way, like lighten anxiety as a diagnosis or depression or anything like that. But certainly as naturopaths, we think that that stuff is dynamic and we hope and we try every single day to repair it. Because anxiety at its core is a breakdown of your nervous system, right? And so Jaime: Absolutely not. No. Yes, absolutely. MG Herbs: your other kind of technique or tool or therapy is for you. And you recommend to your patients that they change the way they talk to each other, change that inner dialogue. ⁓ And that's gonna be helpful for going, hey, sit down, let's take some breaths and eat. That is part of it, right? That self-regulation that we teach our kids. Jaime: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. Totally. But also, you know, it's the herbs that we give you. Often when we see you in clinic, we're giving you that nervous system support. We're giving you adaptogens to help your body cope with stress better. We're just trying to help your body and your nervous system. And like we said, it all comes back to how your nervous system responds. MG Herbs: Hmm ⁓ Yeah, I think. Jaime: Right? So that's where we're really trying to get away from, I think, like, just the cortisol thing. just really, it's really hard to hear that so often when we understand it's much more complex than saying it's a cortisol, you know, dysregulation. MG Herbs: I think it's because it's something they can test. If we can test it, people kind of grab a hold of it because they want answers and they want to understand it and they want to know like how they can fix it. So if you can test your cortisol and it's high, which of course it's going to be in this picture, then that's something they can kind of be like, all right, I understand. know this is on black and white on paper, you know, but testing is so, ⁓ Jaime: Hmm MG Herbs: one part of it. We can't test everything we're talking about. Jaime: And also they just recently showed in a study that like the fact that you know your cortisol is going to be tested will influence your cortisol test results. MG Herbs: And also if you, if it comes back high, that's going to make me more stressed. I don't want to test my cortisol. Jaime: Hard. I know. people often they talk to me about wanting to get their cortisol tested and just really it comes down to what's your nervous system saying to us? What are the signs that your nervous system is showing us that there's some sort of dysregulation going on there at its core? And that's what we can help support you with. And I just think the longer that you're in a state, the more it reinforces it to your body that that's the state that you're in. And that's what we try and do to kind of untangle and support your body and get you back to MG Herbs: Yeah. for sure. Jaime: to that nourished, know, real supported, beautifully nurtured state so that your body can kind of get back to that normal regulation as it should be, as it wants to be, really. It doesn't want to be stuck in that state all the time. It truly doesn't. You know, and I think it's, I do think also, I was just thinking, I do think this is really important to understand that often a lot of times, and I think it's really important to know that we respect that a lot of the time this has come from. MG Herbs: Yeah. Yeah. No. No, I agree. Jaime: It started from trauma, that nervous system dysregulation. And so I think it's really important to acknowledge that, that a lot of it, I, you know, I've had so many clients that say to me, I feel like I've been stuck in fight or flight since I was a child. And that was because of the way that I was brought up. And it's really, it's really hard and it's really tough to kind of hear, but we really acknowledge that the body, you know, we know the body stores trauma. We know this. You know, and so this is where another way that just because we know it's been like this for so long, it doesn't mean it's going to have to be like this for you forever. We can help you with this and it might have been like this for a really long time, but you're not broken. We can help you and support you and just know that the, you know, naturopaths can be a really beautiful support. Like even if you've been like this for so long and so many of my clients are like, I've been like this for decades. MG Herbs: Mm-hmm. Jaime: doesn't have to be like that forever. You know, you're, there's definitely ways that we can help and support you. And I just really wanted to just kind of say that and just acknowledge that that just because you've been like that, like, we're still here for you. You know, there's still so much that we can do to support you as well. MG Herbs: Yeah. for sure. Yeah, we like when that happens, the ball of light gets smaller. That's what trauma does. You know, that's what long-term dysregulation of the nervous system does. And we want to make a ball of light bigger. That's, you know, I'm all of, you know, me metaphors, but that's awesome. ⁓ Jaime: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. actually haven't heard that ball of light analogy of yours for ages for a very, no, I've heard it, but a really long time ago. And I love it. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. MG Herbs: Yeah, yeah. Well, I think that that would probably wrap it up for us. And I think that's been really helpful. And, you know, you guys know you can reach out. We've got all the show notes and everything. And I loved that conversation with you. Thanks for the chats. Jaime: Yeah. Yeah. me too. I think that was a really beautiful conversation. So I'm really glad for all of you for joining us and listening in.