Latest / Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease / 091 // Use this routine to lower your cortisol and improve healing

Transcript

091 // Use this routine to lower your cortisol and improve healing · Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to the Health with Hashimoto's podcast. I'm so happy that you are here.
• 0:04
  I'm so happy that you are taking time to invest in your own learning and improving on your health journey.
• 0:11
  We can all take steps every single day to do something that makes us a little
• 0:17
  better, whether it's physical, emotional, spiritual, in our diet, in our environment.
• 0:22
  There are always things that we can do to improve.
• 0:25
  And in every single episode of this podcast, you will learn simple and sustainable
• 0:30
  things so that you can have better health.
• 0:33
  As you know, autoimmune conditions can be super tricky and you can feel like
• 0:38
  maybe you're making progress and then you're like, wait, what?
• 0:41
  Where did all of my progress go? Or you feel like you're making progress in
• 0:46
  one area and then you look in another area and you feel so far behind and that's frustrating.
• 0:52
  I don't want you to be frustrated. I want you to feel every single time you
• 0:56
  listen to this, I want you to feel like you are making progress because you are.
• 1:00
  And that's one thing we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about
• 1:03
  making progress and measuring the progress.
• 1:06
  But first, about five minutes ago, I got notification that my app is now in the Apple App Store.
• 1:13
  I'm so excited. So if you have an iPhone, head over to the Apple App Store and
• 1:18
  search for Health with Hashimoto's and you you will see the beautiful logo,
• 1:23
  which is a flower with a little purple butterfly inside.
• 1:27
  Now you know that the flower represents the whole you.
• 1:30
  There's a petal for body, mind, spirit, diet, and environment,
• 1:34
  the five parts of the whole you.
• 1:36
  And the butterfly, of course, represents your thyroid because when you have
• 1:39
  Hashimoto's, that's an autoimmune condition, which means it's your immune system,
• 1:43
  that's the problem, but it's attacking your thyroid and your thyroid is a butterfly-shaped
• 1:48
  gland or organ at the base of your neck.
• 1:50
  So that is what you're looking for, health with Hashimoto's.
• 1:54
  And for all of the Android users out there, if that's you, I'm working on it.
• 1:59
  It will be a while before that one comes because I don't have an Android device
• 2:05
  and I can't put something on the Google Play Store until I have my own Android device.
• 2:10
  So I'm working with a friend to maybe use hers. Anyway, it is in progress.
• 2:15
  But for the Apple users, It's in the app store right now. And why do you want the app? Good question.
• 2:21
  Number one, we're going to build a community there. Now the community right
• 2:25
  now is super, super tiny.
• 2:26
  We have like, I don't know, less than a 20, I think users.
• 2:30
  And so there's not a lot of discussion right now. But think to all the Facebook
• 2:34
  groups, like when there's 20 or less people, it's not a lot of discussion.
• 2:38
  However, it's super supportive. And as it grows, you get more and more discussion
• 2:43
  and you get some tight friendships.
• 2:45
  And that is what we're building on the app.
• 2:48
  I know that Hashimoto's can be a very lonely place because you're not alone.
• 2:54
  It's individual. How or what you experience is unlike anybody else.
• 2:59
  And yet at the same time, there are similarities between your experience with
• 3:03
  Hashimoto's and somebody else's experience with Hashimoto's.
• 3:06
  And we want to be able to connect and support each other, to lift each other
• 3:10
  up on the hard days, to encourage each other.
• 3:12
  We want to build a community of support.
• 3:15
  So there is a community forum that you do not have to be part of social media
• 3:19
  to be able to engage with.
• 3:21
  It's all within the app. That's number one. Number two, that is where you're
• 3:25
  going to find the courses from me.
• 3:27
  You're going to have the free mini course, which is Hashimoto's Decoded.
• 3:31
  That one is free as soon as you get the app and log in. The login is free.
• 3:35
  Now that mini course, it'll take you about an hour to go through if you just binge it.
• 3:41
  And that's going to help you figure out your own root causes of Hashimoto's
• 3:45
  so that you can take control of your health.
• 3:47
  And then the other course is a paid course and
• 3:51
  that one is the holistic Hashimoto's course if you
• 3:54
  feel like your doctor isn't really giving
• 3:57
  you the answers that you're looking for like they just want to
• 4:00
  give you medication but they don't want to help you like really figure out what's
• 4:03
  going on with your own body and take steps to actually address the root causes
• 4:09
  you need the holistic Hashimoto's course and it is within the app that you're
• 4:13
  going to find it so what how do you access those if you are an Android user.
• 4:19
  Good question. You can do a workaround. And that is explained.
• 4:25
  I have step-by-step the workaround on my website.
• 4:28
  And the link will be down below in the show notes. It says get the app and you'll
• 4:33
  be able to follow those steps.
• 4:34
  So if you are an Apple user, head to the app right now, download,
• 4:39
  say hi in the community so we can start building it, go through the Hashimoto's
• 4:44
  Decoded course, enroll in the Holistic Hashimoto's course.
• 4:47
  I am so excited to serve you in this way.
• 4:51
  I'm so excited. I mean, oh my goodness, to have an app on your phone so that
• 4:55
  you don't have to go into social media to be able to do this.
• 4:58
  Oh, I'm so excited. So head over there.
• 5:01
  As I said, I got the notification about 10 minutes, five minutes ago.
• 5:06
  It was not very long ago at all.
• 5:08
  So you guess what? but there are zero ratings and reviews yet because it's brand
• 5:12
  new, literally brand new.
• 5:15
  So if you wouldn't mind dropping ratings in the app store, I would really appreciate
• 5:20
  that because Apple, of course, it values ratings and reviews.
• 5:25
  Apple values that for my podcast. It values that for the apps.
• 5:28
  So if you can support me with dropping a five-star rating, that would be so appreciated.
• 5:34
  I can't wait to meet you in the app. All right. So today we are talking about
• 5:39
  measuring your progress.
• 5:41
  And think about like the last time you were in a wide open field or on the ocean
• 5:46
  and watching a sunrise or sunset, right? Can you picture that?
• 5:50
  Can you picture the horizon stretching out in front of you?
• 5:53
  And question, can you catch the horizon?
• 5:56
  Have you ever walked to the horizon and gotten there?
• 6:00
  No, no, you have not. You know that, like as soon as I say that,
• 6:04
  you're like, no, duh, you can't do that.
• 6:06
  Well, of course we know that. We know that you cannot catch the horizon.
• 6:10
  But at the same time, have you ever set goals for yourself that are like the horizon?
• 6:15
  They are always out there, always out of reach. Perhaps your goal is just an ideal.
• 6:22
  It's, I want to have better health. Can you ever reach better?
• 6:28
  No, you can't. Because better is always better. It's never where you are.
• 6:33
  It's always a step in front of you, just like the horizon.
• 6:38
  So this concept that I'm going to be teaching you today, it is called The Gap and the Gain.
• 6:43
  And it comes from a book written by Dr.
• 6:48
  Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan. I have not read The Gap and the Gain,
• 6:52
  but I did just finish reading another book for them that they wrote after that,
• 6:57
  and they did a chapter that had info about the gap and the gain,
• 7:00
  and it was a really good summary, which I appreciate.
• 7:03
  I do plan on reading the full gap and the gain book, but let me give you the overview.
• 7:08
  And I've already taught this twice today. I was planning on teaching it to you
• 7:12
  on the podcast, and then my son, my fourth grader, was struggling in spelling.
• 7:18
  That is his most hated subject, and he's just so down on himself.
• 7:22
  And he's like, mom, I'm a really bad speller. I hate spelling. I'm a horrible speller.
• 7:26
  And so I drew a quick little, very rudimentary drawing on our whiteboard.
• 7:31
  And he had some things to say about my drawing. It was not complimentary.
• 7:36
  You can see my drawing if you're on Instagram. Oh, another thing,
• 7:40
  I changed my Instagram handle.
• 7:41
  So if you're on Instagram, you can search for health.with.hashimoto's because,
• 7:47
  you know, somebody who listens to the podcast, but doesn't notice my name,
• 7:50
  they might be looking for Health with Hashimoto's, not Esther Y.
• 7:53
  So look for Health with Hashimoto's on Instagram, and you can see my very rudimentary drawing.
• 8:00
  I have a horizon, I have a sunrise or sunset, whichever, and then there's a
• 8:05
  tree out in the distance, and then there is a very cartoon, not very well drawn
• 8:11
  chicken in the foreground, and then there's a little stick figure.
• 8:14
  So I asked my son, can you ever get to the horizon? And of course,
• 8:17
  just like you answered, he said no can you
• 8:21
  get to the tree in the distance yes and what about
• 8:23
  the chicken well then he had to mock the chicken because it was
• 8:27
  not very good i was not going for an artistic artistic chicken but we talked
• 8:31
  about that he had just in the drawing that stick figure had just passed the
• 8:35
  chicken and you can see that chicken you can measure your progress by the chicken
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  and the tree, the sunrise.
• 8:44
  The sunset, the horizon, you will never get there.
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  And this is kind of the gap in the gain in a nutshell.
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  When you are in the gap, you are looking at what could be or what should be.
• 8:59
  You're measuring where you are against where you think you should be.
• 9:05
  But the problem is you're measuring yourself against an ideal.
• 9:09
  You're measuring yourself about the.
• 9:13
  Against something that you cannot achieve. So when you're in that gap mindset.
• 9:18
  You can be making progress and actually feel worse about where you are.
• 9:23
  It is a sabotaging yourself.
• 9:26
  And yet, it is so easy to fall into this gap thinking.
• 9:30
  One of my friends and I were talking about this gap and gain thinking.
• 9:34
  We actually were comparing it to a lot of the things that we were raised with
• 9:38
  church about comparing yourself to an ideal.
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  I mean, none of us is God. None of us will ever be God. God is God,
• 9:46
  not us. And we know that God is holy.
• 9:50
  And yes, in the Bible, it says God is holy and be holy as I am holy.
• 9:55
  We will never be there until after Jesus comes back and there is no more sin,
• 10:01
  no more death, no more sorrow in the world.
• 10:03
  Once we are totally free of sin, then we will be be holy.
• 10:07
  But until that time, we struggle with sin.
• 10:11
  And so, we both noticed that growing up, we were always in that gap because
• 10:18
  we were always comparing ourselves against the ideal, against God.
• 10:22
  And you know what? That's the purpose of having laws is to make us realize that
• 10:27
  we are not good enough and we need a Savior.
• 10:30
  And that's why Jesus came. Jesus came to pay for our sins. He came because we are not good enough.
• 10:35
  He came so that we can get to God. And that's another topic.
• 10:39
  I would love to talk to you about it. If you want to learn more,
• 10:42
  let me know, because I would love to help you learn about how you are not good
• 10:47
  enough, and you already know that, and how Jesus came to pay the price and to...
• 10:52
  Bridge the gap. All right. So when you're in that gap thinking,
• 10:56
  especially about your health or about anything, you are always measuring yourself against an ideal.
• 11:01
  You can never get there. You always feel lacking.
• 11:04
  And we've talked a lot about hormones on this podcast.
• 11:08
  And the hormone that is released when you are in the gap is cortisol.
• 11:12
  Now you do need some cortisol in order to be able to function.
• 11:15
  If you had no cortisol, you would not be able to stand up and move.
• 11:18
  We need some. But but cortisol is your stress hormone.
• 11:21
  And when you have a lot of stress all the time, when you have chronically high
• 11:26
  cortisol, then that can cause inflammation and cause weight gain,
• 11:30
  irritability, headaches, brain fog.
• 11:32
  It can cause so many things. It can interfere with your immune system.
• 11:36
  And if you have an autoimmune problem, then you of course want to make sure
• 11:41
  that your immune system is working optimally.
• 11:44
  We want to lower our cortisol levels.
• 11:47
  We want to lower our chronic stress.
• 11:49
  And if you are living in this gap way of thinking, constantly measuring yourself
• 11:54
  against an ideal that you can never reach, then you are constantly raising your cortisol.
• 12:01
  So what then? I never want to leave you without hope. Let's talk about the gain.
• 12:07
  Because, you know, the gap and the gain. If we're not in the gap thinking,
• 12:11
  we're in the gain thinking.
• 12:12
  And that is where where you're measuring yourself against yourself.
• 12:16
  You're measuring yourself against where you were before.
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  You're not measuring yourself against anybody else. You're not measuring yourself against an ideal.
• 12:24
  You're measuring yourself against where you were before.
• 12:28
  So like in my rudimentary drawing of the chicken, the tree, and the sunset,
• 12:33
  the little stick figure had already passed the chicken as it was walking along.
• 12:39
  The rudimentary sick figure can measure his progress against he's already passed the chicken.
• 12:46
  He's not yet to the tree, but he's already passed the chicken. He's made progress.
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  That is gain thinking. It is when you are measuring yourself backwards,
• 12:56
  seeing and appreciating your own progress.
• 13:00
  Now, this is not gratitude. This is not saying that I want you to be grateful,
• 13:05
  Although we have talked about that on the podcast before, I don't remember which
• 13:09
  episode it was, but gratitude can be very powerful for your health.
• 13:13
  But you can be grateful in both areas.
• 13:16
  You can be grateful if you're stuck in the gap.
• 13:19
  You can also be grateful if you're stuck in, or if you're in the gain.
• 13:23
  So it's different than gratitude. It's how you're measuring your progress.
• 13:28
  And when you're in the gain way of thinking, you're measuring yourself backwards,
• 13:32
  seeing and appreciating your own progress.
• 13:36
  And just like the gap thinking had the cortisol hormone, well,
• 13:43
  the gain hormone is dopamine.
• 13:45
  Now, dopamine is the hormone that, you know, it leads to more happiness,
• 13:51
  motivation, excitement.
• 13:53
  Dopamine is a good chemical, a hormone that we are always chasing.
• 13:57
  The authors of the book, the book that I read, did I tell you that?
• 14:01
  It was 10x is easier than 2x, as by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy.
• 14:06
  And a quote from the book, they said, being in the gain radically boosts positive
• 14:11
  emotions, gratitude, and appreciation.
• 14:14
  So like I said, gratitude is different than the gain, but at the same time,
• 14:20
  the gain kind of increases your gratitude because you are noticing where you
• 14:24
  are versus where you were, and you're being grateful for that.
• 14:28
  So how are you going to measure your journey?
• 14:32
  I'm going to give you some tips here. So we talked about what they are,
• 14:35
  the gap and the gain. You've probably identified which one you're in the most.
• 14:40
  And you're like, okay, I want to be in the gain, right? We want to lower our
• 14:44
  cortisol because we want better health.
• 14:46
  So I'm going to give you a routine that can help you lower your cortisol.
• 14:50
  It can help you get into the gain.
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  And also it can improve your healing. And it's going to do this by your sleep
• 14:57
  quality and also by reducing your cortisol.
• 14:59
  Like I said earlier, when your cortisol is chronically high,
• 15:03
  it can lead to inflammation.
• 15:05
  Inflammation causes your immune system to go a little haywire and a haywire
• 15:10
  immune system is autoimmunity. When it's attacking yourself, we want to lower that.
• 15:15
  We want to improve healing. So lowering inflammation is one way.
• 15:20
  Another way is to get better sleep because when you're sleeping,
• 15:24
  that is when your body is doing the healing, the restoring, the renewing. So we want good sleep.
• 15:29
  This routine that I'm going to give you, it does both. And it is a bedtime routine.
• 15:34
  I know I've talked about sleep before, and it's something that a lot of people struggle with.
• 15:39
  So let's talk about this routine. Now this routine, it is from the book,
• 15:44
  the 10x is easier than 2x book.
• 15:46
  However, it's also very, very, very similar to routines that I have talked about
• 15:52
  in the past and that I have had in the sleep course that I used to have.
• 15:56
  And I don't know if I I have that in the Holistic Hashimoto's course.
• 16:01
  I should look at that. I have not been able to make changes for a while in the
• 16:04
  course because I was not allowed to while Apple was reviewing it.
• 16:09
  They're like, once you submit it, you can't make any changes or edits until
• 16:13
  it is either approved or denied.
• 16:15
  So now I can go back to the course and I can make sure that the jumpstart into
• 16:20
  to refreshing sleep and rest is part of the Holistic Hashimoto's Course.
• 16:25
  All right, so like I said, this routine is in the book, but it's.
• 16:31
  Very, very, very similar to other things that I have written.
• 16:34
  Number one, you're going to turn off your phone. You're going to turn it in
• 16:37
  airplane mode, 30 to 60 minutes before bed.
• 16:40
  I don't know about you, but that endless scrolling of, you know,
• 16:45
  Facebook, of X, of Instagram, of TikTok, they all have endless scrolling and
• 16:51
  what your brain is searching for is more dopamine. mean.
• 16:55
  So let's turn off the phone and increase our dopamine by shifting into the gain thinking.
• 17:01
  Now, if you use your phone for an alarm, still put it on airplane mode because
• 17:05
  you don't want those EMFs by you while you're sleeping.
• 17:09
  Airplane mode is fine. If somebody has to get a hold of you,
• 17:12
  I don't know if you have a home phone. We have a home phone and it's through Verizon.
• 17:16
  Where we live, we can't get anything else. Even if we use a cell phone that
• 17:22
  technically uses as Verizon's towers, we still can't get it at our house.
• 17:26
  So we have to have Verizon and we have a home phone.
• 17:28
  So if somebody really needs to get a hold of me, they can call me on that.
• 17:32
  I have my phone off at bedtime. I encourage you to do it if it is at all possible for you.
• 17:38
  So step one of your new bedtime routine is turn off your phone,
• 17:41
  put it into airplane mode 30 to 60 minutes before bed.
• 17:45
  Step two, grab a journal. I use my planner and write down three wins from the day.
• 17:51
  This will will take you one, three, five minutes. It shouldn't take you more
• 17:55
  than five minutes to journal three wins from the day.
• 17:59
  That's it. And like I said, I use my planner. I don't have a lot of space.
• 18:02
  It's just three little bullet points and I'm celebrating how far I've come that
• 18:07
  day, what I accomplished.
• 18:08
  I am looking at the day and framing it as a win.
• 18:12
  Step three, and your final step, is plan three wins for tomorrow.
• 18:16
  And I do this. How am I going to win tomorrow?
• 18:19
  Are these like my top priorities? Yes, they are.
• 18:22
  But sometimes there are things like I'm going to go for a walk because I know
• 18:27
  that that will boost my whole day. It will help my health.
• 18:29
  It will help my mental health, my physical health, my spiritual health.
• 18:33
  It's going to help everything.
• 18:34
  So maybe that's in there. Maybe I have a goal of, you know, or a win of I'm
• 18:39
  going to record a podcast episode.
• 18:40
  I do that too, because that is part of what I do as a business.
• 18:45
  It is how I encourage and empower you and help you with your health.
• 18:49
  So how are you going to win tomorrow?
• 18:52
  By framing today in the focus and the lens of how you won and setting up tomorrow
• 18:59
  for how you're going to win, you are setting yourself up for better sleep.
• 19:05
  How you spend your last hour before you turn out the light, sets the tone for
• 19:11
  how you will sleep and how tomorrow is going to go.
• 19:15
  So this is a super powerful way to lower your cortisol, to increase your sleep
• 19:21
  and increase the quality of your sleep, as well as a lot of times how fast you fall asleep.
• 19:27
  And by doing both of those things, you are impacting your overall healing.
• 19:32
  So I encourage you, set up or develop develop a bedtime routine.
• 19:37
  And if you want to use these three steps, here they are again.
• 19:40
  Number one, you're going to turn off your phone or put it in airplane mode 30
• 19:43
  to 60 minutes before bed.
• 19:45
  Number two, you're going to take three to five minutes to journal three wins that you've had today.
• 19:50
  And then number three, you're going to plan three wins for tomorrow.
• 19:54
  That is it. That is how you can shift from the gap thinking until the gain thinking,
• 20:00
  and you can lower your cortisol all and you can improve your healing.
• 20:04
  All right, I hope this is super helpful for you.
• 20:07
  Go to the Apple App Store right now if you have an iPhone and download the Health
• 20:12
  with Hashimoto's podcast, start a discussion in the community,
• 20:16
  or find one that's already started, and let's talk about the gap and the gain.
• 20:20
  Let's talk about your journey. Let's talk about your wins.
• 20:24
  I would love to get to know you over in the community. I would love to welcome
• 20:28
  you into the free mini course, Hashimoto's Decoded.
• 20:32
  And I will be most delighted to welcome you to the Holistic Hashimoto's course,
• 20:37
  where you're going to find the exact step-by-step plan just for you for better
• 20:43
  health with Hashimoto's. I will see you in the app.
• 20:46
  This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only.
• 20:50
  Please be sure to discuss any concerns and plans with your trusted healthcare professional.
• 20:54
  Music.