Lifestyle & Supplementation for Lower Inflammation and Stress

This episode outlines several strategies for reducing stress and inflammation, such as maintaining a positive mindset and avoiding catastrophizing, engaging in movement like walking, dancing, or yoga, and prioritizing sleep and rest. It also emphasizes the importance of supplementing with nutrients like B12, magnesium, and antioxidants. Consistent effort is necessary for these practices to develop into effective habits. 

Transcript

(00:10):

Welcome back to the Jolie Life Podcast. Here is the third of our inflammation trilogy, and I want to talk about stress because stress is a driver of cortisol, and cortisol really, really turns up the heat and inflammation. We think of inflammation as fire in the body, and which is a great metaphor because it kills cells, it disrupt cells and damages cells, it wrecks havoc. Cortisol pours gasoline on that fire. Cortisol is our stress hormone, so we want to lower, lower, lower cortisol. So how do we do that? How do we do that? Living in a modern life, and I will tell you, if you know me or have listened to this or know Jolie, my life has stress. You know that I have seven kids. You know that I'm very involved as a mom. You know that I have a company, you know that I have stress, I have friends.
(01:11)
I love New York City. You get the environmental stress, the noise, blah, blah, blah. I'm frequently in the city. I work out a lot. That's another stress. So yes, I'm not living under rock or in a cabin in the country. I'm living here, breathing, doing the thing. So how do we lower stress? And I want to give you a few tools for doing that. First and foremost is our mindset. Our mind really, really impacts how we perceive what's happening around us. And when we perceive things as stressful in an emergency, guess what? They're stressful and they're an emergency, and our body responds with cortisol. I learned very, very early on that when things happen to assume first everything is going to work out and to assume that there's an answer for this, I'll give you little antidotes. So being a mom of seven kids, there are always conflicts in the sense of this one has soccer practice, this one has hockey practice, this one has ballet, this one has piano.
(02:38)
And for some reason they're all at the same time, more or less. When those things would happen, I could see this as stress, like, oh my gosh, I'm running here, I'm running there. Oh my gosh, what am I going to do? How am I going to get these kids places they might be late, this person's driving slower in front of me, blah, blah, blah, blah. No, that made cortisol rise in my body. And you can literally, if you key into it, you can feel it. You can feel your heart rate increase, you can feel your shoulders tighten, your belly tighten. You could feel sometimes diarrhea, even you can feel that happening in your body. Instead, I would say to myself, this is all going to work out some way. Somehow this will all work out. And guess what? It always worked itself out. It either someone offered to give someone a ride, there is a rainstorm, something got canceled, something got moved, times got moved.
(03:38)
It always works out. When you lead with that idea, you A, calm your system and you B, open yourself up to the universe coming to figure things out for you. And the other thing is taking a deep breath. So I learned to do this with my kids because having seven kids, there is a perception that you are running around like a chicken with your head cut off and that you should literally be under the floor. That's not what I wanted. I wanted to be like, the picture of motherhood is a good thing. It is a fabulous thing, and that you can be and feel fabulous and be a really great mother. So I learned to breathe deeply because breathing deeply relaxes your body through the parasympathetic nervous system. That's your relaxed nervous system. That's your nervous system that will bring down your cortisol. So when I am stressed or when I am rushed or when I am under the gun, what do I do?
(04:44)
I take a deep breath, allow my belly to push out, my belly button to push out, and then I take a very, very, very, very slow exhale because the exhale is really where the magic is. It is the deep breath in your diaphragm and the slow exhale that allows your vagus nerve to be stimulated, which turns on your parasympathetic nervous system, your rest mode that helps, A, to relax your body, bring down your cortisol, bring down your inflammation, and it clears your mind. And that deep breath gives your brain a boost of energy, which helps it to better deal with everything that's going on. So make it a practice every morning to take a deep breath, make it a practice for a while so that this could get into my system. Every time I opened my car door, I took a deep breath, or every time I got in my car, I took a deep breath and began to practice this so that when I was in a stressful situation or I noticed my body was really agitated, I knew to take a deep breath.
(05:59)
So that's one way that you can help down-regulate cortisol in your body. The third way is to give yourself time outs. And what that means is sometimes you have a few minutes between something. Take that time to not be on your phone or not answer an email or not to return a call, but just take that time to sit for a moment. That 2030 seconds is like a mini reset for your body and your brain, and it allows your body to recalibrate. It allows your brain to recalibrate and it will lower your stress. And fourthly is talk to yourself kindly. So don't talk to yourself doomsday. That's another way of causing extra stress. So there's a verse that says something to the effect that the flowers and the birds, they do not work. They do not toil, but they receive everything that they need. And I remember that when I'm in a stress situation that the universe is here to provide me with everything that I need.
(07:22)
The other thing that comes to mind is don't worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will take care of itself, is to be present to today. Don't allow yourself to go down the rabbit hole of, well, if this happens, then this happens and this could happen, then this might happen, then that might happen, then this might happen. No, no, no, no, no. We're in the present of what's happening because literally the present is the only thing we can impact. So when you have a situation, so say my daughter recently had a situation where she woke up in the morning and her eyesight was really blurry. I could go down a huge rabbit hole. I am telling you guys, because both of my parents had brain aneurysms, I could go down a huge rabbit hole. Instead, what I did was, okay, we have blurry vision. What is the next right move, next right move.
(08:26)
We need a doctor and we need her looked at. So that's what we did, and I just stayed in that space. We need a doctor. We need her looked at. I refuse to allow myself to think beyond that. Once we got the scans, okay, what do they say? Thankfully they didn't say anything. Now what do I do? Because the scans aren't saying anything, thank God, but she still has blurry vision. So what's the next right step? We can go see an eye doctor and we take the path. So we do what is the next right step. And we don't think about what all the possibilities are because that will drive us insane and that will raise our cortisol, increase our inflammation and negatively impact us mentally and physically. Don't allow yourself to go down the rabbit hole. And the last thing I will discuss in terms of the mindset is my mom always told me everything is better in the morning.
(09:33)
And that is something I live by. Whatever there is happening, whatever problems there are, whatever disagreements, go to bed and it'll be better tomorrow. And it may not be worked out to be a hundred percent honest with you guys, but you'll be in a better state to handle it and that will make all the difference. You will be in a better state to handle it, to see your options. I'm going to leave you guys with two other bonuses because I think these are important too, and I don't want to not leave them with you. Shades of gray. So when I say everything will be better in the morning and you'll be able to see more clearly. When you are seeing more clearly and you're in a stressful situation, shades of gray. And what I mean by that is sometimes our stress is caused by bimodal thinking, thinking there's either or I can do this or that.
(10:32)
But in reality, there's a lot of choice in between. There are a lot of options for you. So nothing is black or white there. I mean, maybe there is something that's black or white, but know that in between that there is gray, there are other possibilities. And one thing that helps me is if I have a situation, I start writing down all my choices and I force myself to come up with 10 20 choices because there are shades of gray. And sometimes that practice keys you into, okay, this is what you do. So with our JO life, there is a balance between the Joli meal programs, the Joli meal programs, nutrition programs, and the functioning of the at which used to be the Joli Cafe, but it's becoming a more creative space. So we're calling it at in this process of getting to the Italia, there were so many variations of gray.
(11:51)
There was, okay, let's get a separate cook to do the cafe. Let's change the cafe menu to this. Let's now change it to this. Let's make it the meal delivery menu. Let's shorten our hours, let's expand our hours. All the shades of gray. There wasn't an either or there wasn't a, you can have this or you can have that. There were shes of gray. Allow yourself to have those. Shes of gray because you make your life easier. You feel less locked in, less boxed in, I should say less limited. And you open yourself up to possibility and that helps to lower your cortisol levels. How else can we reduce stress? We can reduce stress by saying no, no is a great word for reducing stress because some of our stress is caused by overcommitment. We can reduce our stress by saying, let me think about it.
(12:49)
Sometimes when someone asks us a question, we feel pressured to give them immediate answer, but it is a hundred percent okay to say. Let me think about it. I went to a really, really good talk that a client gave. Sonya Bari who does relationship coaching or in communication, and she does a lot of things. But one thing that she highlighted is oftentimes in a disagreement or in a communication, not even a disagreement, communication with a person, we feel a need to respond always. And sometimes the best thing is to not give a response. Meaning to hear someone, to listen to someone and just hold space for that person or tell them, let me think about that and I'll get back to you. Or, wow, that's really interesting. Give me some time to ponder that. This gives you space and doesn't put you under the gun When you're under the gun, your cortisol levels go up.
(13:56)
When you give yourself space, when you give yourself time to reflect, your cortisol levels will go down because you will take yourself out of the emergency space. And if you're in a conflict, that's particularly important. Like give me a moment. Let me think about this. Before you do something, say something that you'll regret that will create more stress in your life. Just give yourself space. Give yourself time. That is a huge, huge help in terms of reducing cortisol in your day in your life. So those are the mindset and kind of ways of being that help you to reduce stress. The other big aspect of my life for stress reduction is movement and movement that connects me to myself because sometimes we are feeling the rise of cortisol because we are disconnected to what we want and we're disconnected to actually feeling embodied. We just feel like all over the place, we feel scattered.
(15:08)
It helps to, when we connect to ourselves, to our bodies, it takes, I think of it as those spokes of a wheel. It brings all those spokes in so we can be centered. A centered state is a less stressful state, by the way. And so incorporate your movement, particularly movements that connect you to your body. So here we're thinking of walking, dance, swimming, yoga, things of that sort that connect you to your body, Pilates bar method, things of that sort. That is a huge help for reducing stress. If you are a very dynamic person who likes really, really intense exercise, that too can be a stress release. My only caution is it can't be your only stress release because then you will end up doing the thing so much that it actually becomes a producer of cortisol instead of a reducer of cortisol. So if you want a big run, like a big sprint or you want to do a hi workout or you want to do something that's very, very intense, let that be your two to three times a week for short durations of 20 minutes max expenditure of stress.
(16:35)
Don't let that be your chronic habitual exercise that you use to get rid of stress that will stress your body out more. So that's on the exercise front. Movement is hands down, a great, great cortisol reducer and stress reducer. And the third, so we talked about mindset, we talked about exercise. Thirdly is sleep. Allow yourself rest. And sometimes when you can't get to sleep, just think of it as resting time. You are having resting time and not to pressure the sleep. Sometimes when we pressure the sleep, it makes it worse. Your body just needs to downregulate. So think of it as I need downregulation. So this is your sleep, this is your meditation, this is your deep breath in. Give yourself that sleep slash rest space. And then in terms of, because people are always asking about supplements. In terms of supplements to help with inflammation, I would suggest that your first supplement be your food, your second supplement be antioxidants like your B12 for instance, and your third supplement being magnesium because most people are magnesium deficient.
(17:54)
And your fourth supplement being a supplement to support the immune system, whether that's zinc, whether that is, I love NAC as a supplement for my immune system. So that and the omega threes that I mentioned in one of the prior episodes, that is stress reduction. Embedding these things, practicing these things. I use the word practice a lot because it's value neutral and it signals to you that this is something that you're not going to flip a switch and suddenly I'm living stress free or I know how to dissipate my stress. This is something that you practice and you get better at and better at and better at. And before you know it, you are in a space where I live, where you have a ton of stuff going on and you are able to dissolve the stress and feel whole and feel happy and feel good.
(18:50)
I hope that this helped you. If this helped you, please, please share this podcast. Please give me feedback. But I hope that it's been helpful. Use some of the tools. Let me know how they go and subscribe to our podcast. Listen, listen, listen, and lots of love. Julia, I hope you have enjoyed this podcast on information. I would love it if you would leave feedback, if you would leave questions, if you would share this, if you would subscribe, if you would like, you can reach us@thejolielife.com. You can come to the at 12 Village Road and just meet your Health Dream team, our chefs, our program designers, everything. And we would love for you to share this. And we would love to know what your health concerns are, what your wellness concerns are, and how we can help you. At Jolie, we try to blend beauty and science and doability to help you optimize your health and to support you in the best way possible that's holistic and really propels all of you to help.
(20:07)
That's it. Love you. I hope you enjoyed this podcast, the Julie Life Podcast. And if this podcast helped you in any way, I invite you to share it with your friends and your family and whoever you come across that you think might be helped by this podcast. I would love to hear your comments. And you can contact me at julia@thejolielife.com and please follow us on Instagram, the Jolie Life. Our website is the jolie life.com. And it would be lovely if you would subscribe and if you would rate this podcast and go back and share this with someone. Let the ripple effect happen. Let the joly life be the beautiful life that keeps on giving by beauty. Lots of love.