Latest / Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease / 165 // The Weight of the World Is Hurting Your Health: How to Protect Your Mind and Body

Transcript

165 // The Weight of the World Is Hurting Your Health: How to Protect Your Mind and Body · Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease

• 0:00
  The past days and weeks have been really heavy.
• 0:03
  We have been just bombarded with almost more than our hearts can bear.
• 0:11
  We are not designed for this much grief and stress.
• 0:15
  We're not designed for the entire world's news to be in our hands,
• 0:20
  to be in our pocket, to come at us through social media.
• 0:25
  So today on the episode, we are going to talk about the stress of social media.
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  The stress of the world, but more importantly, how you can find peace amidst the storm.
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  Because stress does impact autoimmune conditions like Hashimoto's.
• 0:41
  We're going to talk about that too.
• 0:43
  And I do have some solutions for you. I never want to leave you hanging.
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  We have solutions for social media and for stress.
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  And no, I'm not going to say just go on a detox, because while that would be
• 0:54
  awesome, it's not really practical for everybody.
• 0:57
  So stay till the end. I'm going to give you some tips, some practical things like always,
• 1:03
  plus a 30-day free premium membership to an app that I have been using in the
• 1:08
  middle of the night, the past couple of nights when I wake up and my brain is
• 1:11
  just going too fast and I can't get back to sleep.
• 1:13
  I'm going to share all of that for you on today's episode of Health with Hashimoto's.
• 1:17
  Welcome to the Health with Hashimoto's podcast. This is where you will find
• 1:21
  clarity and simple, sustainable strategies to feel better.
• 1:25
  I want to help you figure out your root causes.
• 1:28
  My name is Esther Yunkin. I am a registered nurse.
• 1:31
  I spent about 17 years in the emergency department and then got sick and tired
• 1:35
  of putting Band-Aids on chronic things.
• 1:37
  I went back to school and now I have been in holistic health education for about 10 years.
• 1:42
  I know how exhausting it is to live with fatigue, brain fog,
• 1:46
  and the ups and downs of Hashimoto's. And that is why I'm here.
• 1:50
  I'm here to cut through the confusion and to give you practical steps that support
• 1:54
  your body, calm your immune system, so that you can regain your energy and feel like yourself again.
• 2:00
  How are you doing? It has been a very rough couple days and weeks.
• 2:06
  Whether you're listening to this in real time or whether you're listening in
• 2:09
  the future, how are you doing?
• 2:11
  I really care. I do this podcast for you, for the person listening.
• 2:17
  Most of my listeners are women. Sometimes the husband finds me and passes the
• 2:21
  podcast to his wife, but I know
• 2:23
  some men also listen because it's not just women who have Hashimoto's.
• 2:27
  But right now I want to ask you personally. How are you doing?
• 2:31
  Come over to our school community or hop over to Instagram and send me a DM.
• 2:36
  Let me know how you're doing. I really care. If there's something,
• 2:39
  some way that I can pray for you and help you, I would love to.
• 2:44
  And of course, I can always help you through the Holistic Hashimoto's program
• 2:48
  or through one-on-one Hashimoto's health sessions.
• 2:52
  And I just, I want the best for you. That is why I have this podcast,
• 2:56
  to help you cut through all of the confusion and all of the overwhelm.
• 3:01
  And that is what this week has been. It has been overwhelming.
• 3:06
  So right now, as I record, September 11th, the anniversary just happened.
• 3:11
  That's always a bit of a stressor. Every year in our homeschool and sometimes
• 3:16
  with my public school kids, by charter school kids, we watch the Boat Rescue
• 3:23
  video. I don't know if you've watched that. If you haven't, I highly recommend it.
• 3:26
  It's Tom Hanks' video. I don't remember the name of it, but it is about how.
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  Boat captains from every single type of boat came together to rescue people
• 3:37
  on the island after the towers fell.
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  Every single year we watch it, every single year it makes me cry because like Mr.
• 3:46
  Rogers says, you're looking for the helpers and all of these boat captains,
• 3:52
  they came together to help.
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  And it's just beautiful. You see them coming through the mist and the fog and to rescue.
• 3:59
  It's amazing. And of course, it's a horrible, tragic day too.
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  So, you know, we were gearing up for that. And then in the news,
• 4:08
  Irina Zarutska, she was murdered.
• 4:11
  I did not watch that murder, but a lot of people did.
• 4:14
  Her murder was on video, a completely innocent Ukraine refuge,
• 4:20
  riding the train, the subway, something, back from work.
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  And she was murdered. And then Charlie Kirk was murdered again on video.
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  So many thousands of people saw it.
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  Some people saw it live and a lot of people saw it on video.
• 4:40
  My 18-year-old son came and told me about it and I had been getting ready to
• 4:46
  go downstairs and have something to eat because I was really hungry and all
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  of a sudden I was not hungry at all.
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  I was feeling sick. I did not watch the video.
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  I heard, I think somebody must have said something on social media that the video was live.
• 5:03
  So I didn't click on any videos. I actually put my hand up in front of a video
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  because somebody was explaining the news.
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  And I did not want to see something while I was trying to figure out,
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  was he still alive or was he not?
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  And so it's been a week. But even if you are listening to this in the future,
• 5:25
  We have the world in our hands.
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  This little smartphone and laptops and computers, even the radio, YouTube...
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  The whole world is right here in our hands.
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  And we are not designed, at least I do not believe that we are designed for
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  that much information and grief.
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  There are always things going on.
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  You know, we talk about wars around the world and earthquakes and natural disasters.
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  There's always things going on. Always.
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  And this podcast episode is not going to tell you how to deal with the phone in your pocket.
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  I'm going to give you one app suggestion because it has helped me so much.
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  And it also helps some clients.
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  I'm going to read one testimonial for you. But mostly I want to acknowledge
• 6:15
  that there are huge stressors right now.
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  Huge stressors. And it's not all designed for, or we are not designed for this much stress.
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  So I read two articles today.
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  One of them was about social media and stress. And this article was from,
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  oh shoot, where was it from?
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  Psychology Today. And it was talking about social media and stress.
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  Well, we all know social media is designed to hook us with dopamine surges,
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  with the likes, the notifications, comments.
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  Social media is designed to make you addicted.
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  It is designed to keep you coming back, to keep you scrolling.
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  And across all ages, it heightens stress. Kids face more cyber bowling.
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  They face unrealistic comparisons.
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  Women of all ages also experience that.
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  We know that people use filters. And yet at the same time, when we look in the
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  mirror, our brains, well, they've been looking at filtered things,
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  even if you follow people who don't use filters.
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  Most cameras, like if you use the Instagram app to take a picture,
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  there is a built-in filter that you can't turn off.
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  It's just slight. And then a lot of people use more.
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  Anyway, we all know that in our heads. But then when we look in the mirror,
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  our brain has a hard time figuring that out.
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  Like, oh, this is real life. You are beautiful just as you are.
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  So across all ages, social media heightens stress. And that is what this article was all about.
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  Yes, there are positives for social media. I love that I can stay connected
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  with friends. I can stay connected with family.
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  I love my community on social media.
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  But at the same time, I do know that it increases stress.
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  So here is what I have done for myself. Because I have an addiction.
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  I know that I will just keep scrolling.
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  I have tried to set time limits for myself. I have an iPhone.
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  And you just hit ignore, right? That timer pops up and you're like, ignore.
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  So I got a free app. It's called Screen Zen and you can set your own limits.
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  And this works so much better for me. You can pay them a tip, but it is free.
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  So Screen Zen, I highly recommend it. It has worked so well for me.
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  I've recommended it to others and let me read what one of my clients has said.
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  So she sent me a before and after screenshot. She went from 35 hours on the
• 8:47
  phone in one week to eight hours on the phone the next week after uploading
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  or after installing ScreenZen.
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  She said most of it was searching, just scanning for news, but she said,
• 8:58
  thank you, 27 extra hours per week. That is a part-time job.
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  And she had the little emoji of like, I'm kind of embarrassed.
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  I can't believe I did that. I totally understand.
• 9:09
  Yes, our screens suck us in.
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  So tip number one, screens in. I'm sure there, I know that there are other apps
• 9:17
  out there to help you cut down on your screen time.
• 9:19
  I love this one. It has helped me so much. And as you could hear from that,
• 9:24
  it's also helped other people.
• 9:26
  All right. So what about autoimmune disease and stress?
• 9:30
  Yep, there is a link. We have done a bunch of episodes on stress,
• 9:33
  or I have done a bunch of episodes on stress.
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  Let me tell you, in case you want to listen for more of those.
• 9:39
  I haven't done one in actually quite a while.
• 9:42
  We were due. Episode 7 and 8, early, early episodes, that is on stress,
• 9:47
  like overall stress. And then episode 8 is on tips.
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  Episode 24, I'm talking about your adrenals. That is your stress little organ. So episode 24.
• 9:57
  Episode 35 is the damage caused by stress and how to slow that down or help it heal.
• 10:03
  Episode 35 is using art to de-stress. And then episode 40 is all about spiritual stress.
• 10:10
  I will have that list down in the show notes in case you want to go back to
• 10:14
  any of those episodes to listen more about stress.
• 10:18
  But 80% of autoimmune patients report that their disease started after extreme stress.
• 10:26
  There is a huge link between autoimmune diseases and stress.
• 10:31
  The article I was reading in Science News Today is.
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  It likened it to our stress being like chewing gum and that chewing gum getting
• 10:41
  shoved into the lock or so that you can't put a key in it anymore.
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  And so if the stress of the chewing gum is literally gumming up your body's
• 10:53
  mechanisms, then things aren't going to work right, right?
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  But the thing is, there's several different ways that stress works on your body
• 11:02
  to impact your immune system and to impact autoimmune disease.
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  We do know that stress is directly related to autoimmunity.
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  Chronic overload, it hits women, and we have two to ten times higher rates when you are stressed.
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  And when you are a female, you have a up to ten times higher rate of autoimmune conditions.
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  We don't want that you don't
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  want it I don't want it no we want health we
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  want to feel like ourselves we want to have abundant energy
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  we want to have clear brains we want to have our hair skin and nails like they
• 11:44
  were when we were in our 20s and 30s even if we are you know aging we want to
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  feel and look like ourselves we want our brains to be working and autoimmune
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  disease steals that from us.
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  And I am not here to bless that.
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  I want you to get back to the you that you want to be.
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  So what can you do for stress and autoimmune disease?
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  Like I said, episode eight is full of tips on it.
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  But where you focus your mind really matters.
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  And that has been very hard for me over the last couple of weeks,
• 12:20
  because I am on social media a lot.
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  And I love to learn.
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  And I have realized over the past month or two that my love of learning has
• 12:33
  translated into my love of learning about what's going on in the world.
• 12:37
  And that's not necessarily a good thing. I can get too plugged in. So...
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  I need to focus my mind on what is important. And that is where I have been using the app Abide.
• 12:51
  If you listened to episode 150, that's where I was kicking off the Hashimoto's
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  Health Lab series, which was the summer episodes.
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  They were all 10 minutes, around 10 minutes or less, talking about different tools.
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  And that first tool was the Abide app.
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  I love the Abide app. I've been using it, especially over the last week.
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  They have sleep stories.
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  Now, the first time I opened the sleep story, I was like, what is 90 minutes long?
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  What in the world? I'm not going to stay awake for 90 minutes.
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  But I learned that it's actually just repeating, which I love.
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  So I'm going to tell you how I've used it the last like two.
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  Maybe two nights out of the last three.
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  I wake up in the middle of the night, my mind is racing, and I can't turn my mind off.
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  It's not that I'm super worried or stressed. I just want to go back to sleep.
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  So I have my phone next to my bed. I know not the best habit. It is in airplane mode.
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  And I have some sleep stories from Abide already downloaded.
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  I love that they allow you to download some stuff ahead of time so you don't
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  have to turn your phone off of airplane mode.
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  So I grabbed my phone. I hit play on one of those sleep stories.
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  Super calming, biblically focused. Let me tell you the one I was doing last
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  night. It was called love is the theme.
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  I've also listened to A Summer Night Beneath the Twinkling Lights.
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  There's a bunch of them, and I love that they're just so peaceful.
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  It gives my brain something to focus on something that is peaceful,
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  uplifting. It focuses me on,
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  biblical truth on real things, on God's Word, on God Himself.
• 14:34
  I love that there's something to help my brain.
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  Because in the middle of the night, when you wake up and that brain is racing
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  and you can't seem to focus it.
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  Having somebody talk to you gently, soothingly in your ear and remind you what
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  is true, good, and beautiful, that is just such a gift.
• 14:55
  And a warning, I did see a news story, I think two weeks ago,
• 15:00
  if you go to sleep with earbuds in, please be very careful because while you're
• 15:05
  sleeping, your ears are not as sensitive.
• 15:09
  I mean, you're sleeping, so
• 15:10
  you're not going to necessarily notice when your ears start to get sore.
• 15:14
  And especially if the noise is too loud,
• 15:17
  that inflammation from the pressure of the earbuds along with the volume,
• 15:23
  it can do significant damage to your auditory nerves. So please be very careful.
• 15:30
  They have like headbands, I think, and they have a lot of different solutions.
• 15:34
  I typically sleep on my side, I sleep on my right side.
• 15:38
  So when I am going to listen to one of those sleep stories, I just get the left
• 15:41
  earbud and I put it in because that ear is not going to be up against my pillow.
• 15:46
  But please be cautious if you're going to use earbuds.
• 15:49
  And when my husband is working overnight, I don't use earbuds because,
• 15:53
  you know, nobody in the room to be bothered.
• 15:55
  But when he is home, I'll use that one earbud. So that's just my tip.
• 16:00
  Abide has given you, my listeners, 30 days of their free premium membership,
• 16:06
  or sorry, 30 days of their premium membership for free.
• 16:09
  I do have a link down in the show notes so that you can get the full thing for free.
• 16:14
  And it's not just sleep stories, but Abide has so many things for you,
• 16:21
  like biblical meditations.
• 16:22
  Right now, they have a
• 16:25
  a playlist called Love That Heals. Words that bring healing,
• 16:29
  love your enemies, love one another, being there for another.
• 16:33
  There's so much goodness in this Abide app. And that is what I recommend for everybody to do.
• 16:41
  Find the goodness in the world. We cannot escape all of the stress.
• 16:47
  We can fix our minds on what is good and what is true.
• 16:51
  And ultimately, we need to fix our eyes on Jesus, because the only way to have
• 16:57
  full peace, peace promises in the Bible, peace that passes understanding,
• 17:04
  peace beyond what you can understand.
• 17:06
  When things are going crazy, haywire, horrible, you can still have peace inside.
• 17:12
  Yep, you still might have grief, you still might have stress,
• 17:15
  but the ultimate answer is Jesus.
• 17:18
  This podcast is not a Christian podcast. I am a Christian. I follow Jesus.
• 17:24
  This podcast is about health. It is about your holistic health,
• 17:29
  body, mind, spirit, diet, environment, because the whole you matters.
• 17:34
  All of you, all of those five pieces are together in one whole.
• 17:39
  You cannot take one away from the other. Your spiritual health matters.
• 17:44
  Your mental health matters.
• 17:46
  Both of them impact your physical health. And I want you to feel I'll see you next time.
• 17:52
  Well. Again, I want you to feel like you are designed to feel.
• 17:57
  So let me know how you're doing. Send me a message and drop down on the show notes.
• 18:02
  Listen to more of the stress episodes. If you need some more resources, download the Abide app.
• 18:08
  Get that 30 days for free. Install Screen Zen. I know that's three different things for you to do.
• 18:14
  And technically, I'm only supposed to give you one call to action,
• 18:18
  one thing to do after an episode.
• 18:21
  At least that's what all the experts say. They say that after listening to a
• 18:24
  podcast, the listener is only going to do one thing.
• 18:27
  Well, I guess you get to pick which one thing.
• 18:30
  Screen Zen has helped me so much in cutting down my time staring at my phone.
• 18:35
  It has helped me with that addiction.
• 18:37
  And the Abide app, so good for peace and for sleep and for listening to a meditation
• 18:46
  that I know is biblically based.
• 18:48
  So I will see you back here next week on The Health with Hashimoto's.
• 18:53
  Next week, I'm going to be answering a listener question.
• 18:56
  She was asking me about different Hashimoto's programs that are out there and
• 19:01
  what would be best for her.
• 19:03
  I'll be answering that question next week. I'll see you then.
• 19:06
  This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only.
• 19:09
  Please discuss any changes with your trusted healthcare provider.
• 19:12
  To take your next step, join our school community and explore the courses available
• 19:16
  there. You do not have to figure your health out alone.
• 19:20
  So that is school, S-K-O-O-L.com, and it is the Health with Hashimoto's community.
• 19:26
  I'll see you next time on the Health with Hashimoto's podcast.