Mind-Body Wellness Podcast

Cacao & Your Nervous System: The Plant Medicine for Peace, Joy & Energy | Ep. 14

• Season 2 • Episode 14

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Did you know that cacao—the sacred plant behind chocolate—is also a powerful mood medicine? In this episode, we're diving into the heart-opening, brain-supporting, and nervous system-soothing benefits of ceremonial cacao. Tune in, sip slowly, and let’s explore cacao as a cozy medicine for softening our heart space and encouraging deeper regulation.

You'll learn:

  • The 3 science-backed compounds in cacao that support mood, energy, and emotional resilience
  •  How cacao differs from regular chocolate and why it’s so supportive for trauma healing and nervous system regulation
  • How cacao affects dopamine, serotonin, and stress hormones
  • My favorite simple cacao recipe


✨ Maya Moon Cacao is currently my fave organic ceremonial-grade cacao! They also serve their yummy cacao at the Maya Moon Cacao Cafe in San Diego, CA. 

🌻 Work with Annika:
Book your first consultation at: nourishedbynature.co
Instagram: @nourished_by_nature_wellness




This podcast episode is for educational and informational purposes only and solely as a self-help tool for your own use. I am not providing medical, psychological, or nutrition therapy advice. You should not use this information to diagnose or treat any health problems or illnesses without consulting your own medical practitioner. Always seek the advice of your own medical practitioner and/or mental health provider about your specific health situation. For my full Disclaimer, please go to https://www.nourishedbynature.co/disclaimer



Speaker 1:

Welcome to the MindBody Wellness Podcast, where we have insightful conversations on all things holistic health and mental wellness. I'm your host, Annika Taylor. I'm a holistic health practitioner and somatic coach, and I believe that the key to healing already lies within you. Together with Nature's Medicines, we have everything we need to live our most authentic, expansive, coziest and dreamiest life possible. Let's get nourished. Welcome back to another episode of the MindBody Wellness Podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today. I just want to really take a moment to say thank you. I appreciate each and every one of you listening. I hope that you're having a wonderful evening, morning, afternoon, wherever you are in your beautiful part of the world. What if I told you? We have available to us an amazing medicinal herb that not only is supportive for your brain, your cognitive health, fights fatigue, fights those energy crashes in the afternoon, balances blood sugar, helps your body be more sensitive to insulin, supports your heart health, provides high antioxidants and boosts your mood by providing more calm, more joy and just more peace and just tranquility in your body. There is one herb that does it all, you guys, and this is what we're going to be talking all about today, which is the cacao plant. I have been using a cup of cacao in the morning and sometimes a small cup in the afternoon, rather than my decaf coffee, my decaf coffee, Um, and it has been such a wonderful experience. I feel so much better, I have more energy, I have more focus and my mood is just really so much better. And it was really nice to experiment with this as well for my husband, Justin. The other day he was just saying like, yeah, whenever I have decaf in the afternoon, I get like this energy crash and I just haven't been feeling good in the afternoons. So I said, well, can I try making you a cup of cacao instead of that cup of decaf in the afternoon? And he tried that. And then I asked him about an hour later how are you feeling? Any you know energy slump, Do you feel good? And he's like, oh my gosh, I actually feel really good. Um, like, my energy's good, my focus is good. And he worked all the way until, I think, 6 PM we both own our own businesses and he was able to just work all the way up till six without feeling really, really tired or, yeah, just like that fatigue that he was getting, and I thought that was a really great example of how cacao can help support our energy, our focus and our mood, and so we're going to get into the science of how cacao does that.

Speaker 1:

But let's back up first and talk about what cacao actually is. So cacao is the raw, unprocessed form of chocolate. It's made by grinding the fermented beans of the theobroma cacao tree, and this food has been cultivated and grown and spread throughout Central and South America for thousands of years, which I just think is so beautiful to be able to work with herbs that have been in, you know, the medicine and ritual and ceremony of cultures for so long. Um, in Maya and Aztec cultures, it was called the food of the gods and it was often used as like. Instead of using money, they'd use cacao beans as currency, which speaks to how much they appreciated money. This functional food, Cacao, was considered sacred, a plant that could open the heart, connect you to the divine and bring people together, and I think it's really, really special when there are plants like this. It makes me think of kava as well, the kava herb and these plants. When we talk about bringing people together, it makes me think about the parasympathetic state of the nervous system, because that is the state where we can connect, we can co-regulate, we yeah, we are just able to have that connection with each other because we're not in a protective stress response or a protective freeze response, and so that speaks to the plant medicine being able to bring us into that parasympathetic state.

Speaker 1:

So now let's talk about mood, health and cacao. So this is where it gets really fascinating for me when we're talking about all the mood and energy support and focus support. So one of the bioactive compounds that is in cacao is called theobromine. One of the bioactive compounds that is in cacao is called theobromine. Theobromine is a bioactive compound that is a stimulant but, unlike caffeine, theobromine is gentler and longer lasting. It gives you a soft, sustained boost of energy and focus without the crash or anxiety that coffee can trigger. So when we're talking about nervous system healing, trauma healing, supporting your body after stress or burnout, instead of using coffee we can use cacao as a gentler support that really has so many more health benefits just than giving us better moods and energy, and we're going to talk all about that coming up.

Speaker 1:

Another thing that supports mood in cacao is called PEA, which is really wonderful for helping to boost dopamine levels, and dopamine is important for having focus, because when we have low dopamine we can have symptoms of ADHD and having no focus We'll have a lot of fatigue and just low moods. So dopamine is really important to have in healthy levels and that's one of the benefits of cacao is called anandamide, known as the bliss molecule, Um. This is actually an endocannabinoid similar to compounds found in the cannabis plant or in CBD, but it's also naturally produced by your brain. Cacao helps increase anandamide levels, promoting feelings of peace, connection and ease, Um and so that's a really interesting one. The way that CBD works so well to help calm the system is it goes right to the receptor sites in our body that we already have for these endocannabinoid receptor sites and it locks into those and it provides that same molecule that the body makes right. So it's naturally providing what the body already makes to produce calm and peace and connection and ease.

Speaker 1:

There's also some tryptophan in raw cacao, which is important for our sleep, memory, mood boosting benefits, because tryptophan helps us make serotonin. There's lots of magnesium, potassium, there's copper, there's iron, lots of trace minerals that are really important for our brain health. There is also a high amount of flavonoids, which are antioxidant compounds, and these improve blood flow to the brain, which helps reduce inflammation and protects your brain from oxidative stress, and that's really important, especially if you are someone with pyroluria or pyro disorder, because that creates a lot of oxidation and cacao can help to support you in giving you those antioxidants. So what are some of the other benefits of cacao? There are a lot, but I'm going to go through the main ones that I found really interesting.

Speaker 1:

So number one heart health and blood pressure support. It helps to bring circulation to the body. It helps to bring circulation to the body. It has a lot of antioxidants in it, which helps to lower blood pressure, support vascular health, also protect against blood clots and just really improve that circulation. It also helps support if there is high cholesterol and inflammation in the body. It can improve HDL cholesterol and decrease LDL cholesterol. Cacao actually helps to support our body in being sensitive to insulin, which is really important. When our body starts to get not sensitive to insulin anymore, that's when we see things like prediabetes and diabetes. So blood sugar it can actually help to regulate our blood sugar and stabilize our blood sugar throughout the day, and that's really important for our mental health because if our blood sugar is on this roller coaster all throughout the day. That's going to create a lot of mood swings, irritability, feeling angry and just not good. It can bring a lot of energy crashes in the afternoon. So that blood sugar regulation part of cacao is really fantastic.

Speaker 1:

Cacao not only helps our mood, but it's also really good for our brain health, and so there's a lot of neuroprotective properties. There's the antioxidants, which help to reduce inflammation and increase blood flow to the brain. Cacao is something that is really helpful for fatigue and there have been studies with people who have chronic fatigue syndrome and really the high polyphenol rich cacao that they were given actually reduced anxiety and improved their energy. And now that we understand you know the dopamine boosting benefits and the mood boosting benefits and the antioxidant support, it's starting to make a lot of sense why cacao would help to reduce fatigue. So now that you have learned all of the wonderful benefits and I'm sure that I've missed many, but those are the main benefits when it comes to our mood health, our heart health, our brain health, energy we're going to talk about really quickly how do I actually make a cup of cacao so that you can try this at home.

Speaker 1:

And unlike cocoa powder, which has the healthy cocoa fat removed and it's often processed with alkali. Ceremonial cacao retains the cacao butter which is rich in heart-healthy fats and compounds and that's important for healthy neurotransmitters and that energy support. And it has all of its natural compounds in it the theobromine, the anandamide, the PEA, the flavonoids. Those are all there in the original ratios, working synergistically in the body. So Ceremonial cacao is higher in active compounds for mood and healing and that is one of the best ways, I think so far in my research, to consume cacao is in its natural form.

Speaker 1:

So basically, to make a yummy cup of cacao, I will get my ceremonial grade cacao and use about 20 to 30 grams and I think that that's around two to three tablespoons. Um, if you have the ones that's pre-ground and you just scoop it out and then I put that in a like a pot, I start heating that up and then I add water because you don't want to burn the chocolate. So that's why it's important to add water pretty fast and then you just kind of stir it and create a paste and then you could add more water to your desired kind of like creaminess level. I like it to be pretty thick, so I think I'm adding like two to three tablespoons, for maybe like a cup and a half or two cups of water I'm not a hundred percent sure and then I add in some like I like to add ginger and cayenne pepper, like a tiny bit of cayenne. And then I like to add cinnamon, definitely Cause it tastes so good. Sometimes I'll put in some like Redmond's real salt, and then I just put that in the blender and I blend it together.

Speaker 1:

I add MCT oil, which is really good If you're suffering from fatigue, if you have energy crashes. Mct oil is medium chain triglycerides. It's from coconut oil. One of the fastest ways to actually get calories and nutrients into your mitochondria bypasses the GI tract, so a really good way to get fuel to your brain. If you notice that you're really tired all the time or you have fatigue. Your brain, If you notice that you're really tired all the time or you have fatigue and that's one of the the one of the things I always have my clients start with if they're, you know, really fatigued. So I love adding MCT or ghee or coconut oil and then blending that in the blender. It makes it really creamy. I'll add some raw honey or maybe some coconut sugar, if you have it, and then just pour that into my cup and it is the yummiest treat in the world.

Speaker 1:

Now I have a little life hack. If you want to try making a cup of drinking chocolate, you can buy organic dark chocolate. That is um brands like um hue hu chocolate. They have really good. They have a salty, plain dark chocolate. That's I don't know, like maybe 70, 80% uh dark chocolate, so that also has a cocoa butter in there and you can take two to three squares of that, melt that in a pot with uh like six to eight ounces of water and then put that with some coconut oil or a little bit of ghee or MCT oil and just blend that together, maybe some raw honey, and that actually has worked really well for me to make a cup of cacao if I don't have, you know, my fancy ceremonial grade cacao on hand, which I don't always, and so that is a really easy way to make cacao if you don't have ceremonial cacao. Cacao has really improved my quality of life over the past two months and just the mood and energy support alone have been so wonderful. But I also love learning about the other medicinal benefits that cacao offers and it makes me really happy that we have this delicious medicine that we can benefit from.

Speaker 1:

There are a couple, um, just kind of cautions with cacao. As with any herb. There's not going to be one herb that's like perfect for everyone. Every person's constitution and situation is different. So for you, if you have a really high sensitivity to caffeine, you might notice that cacao still makes you feel jittery and might not be the best support for you right now until you can support your nervous system and stress response and that maybe wouldn't be such a high sensitivity for you, and then you could try cacao again. Um, if that is a problem, adding fat does help with that, or should help with that, but that's something to consider. And then another thing is if you are very sensitive to oxalates or if you have hadalate-related kidney stones. Chocolate in general is high in oxalates, similar to spinach, right, and so for some people that are sensitive, you want to be careful. Or when you're consuming it, don't consume more than 20 to 30 grams of cacao daily and be sure to include a calcium-rich food with the cacao, because that will help bind any of the oxalates that could be harmful out of the cacao and pull that out of the body with the calcium. So those are really the only kind of cautions that I really found on cacao. So let me know if you do try cacao.

Speaker 1:

I'm really excited to hear from you guys and see if it also brings you just the amazing benefits that so many people get with cacao. Thank you so much for sharing a little bit of your day with me and learning about cacao. I hope that you found it really interesting and exciting to learn about all the health benefits and mood boosting benefits that cacao offers. I love learning with you. I love talking about herbal medicine and nutrient therapy and all the ways that we can support our body for just the best life possible. You let me know if you do try the cacao. I'd be really interested to hear how you feel after, you know, maybe doing a morning or an afternoon cup of cacao. And again, I will link my favorite ceremonial cacao in the description. And until next time, my friend, I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and stay nourished. Thank you.