your body speaks

Ep9: Perceiving & Pulsing: How Your Senses and Circulatory System Keep You Thriving

• Dr. Brook Sheehan

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In Episode 9 of your body speaks, Dr. Brook Sheehan explores two essential functions of the body—perceiving and pulsing. From how your body interprets the world around you through sight, sound, touch, and even lesser-known senses, to how your heart and circulatory system keep every cell nourished and thriving, this episode uncovers the hidden intelligence behind these vital processes.

You’ll discover how sensory perception shapes your daily experiences, why proper circulation is the key to vitality, and simple ways to optimize these systems for better health.

Key Takeaways:

  • The Seven Senses: Beyond sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing, learn about interoception (internal awareness) and proprioception (body positioning).
  • How Sensory Perception Works: The role of the thalamus as your body’s "Grand Central Station" for processing external and internal signals.
  • The Power of the Circulatory System: How your heart, blood vessels, and lymphatic system keep oxygen and nutrients flowing while removing waste.
  • Nitric Oxide’s Role in Blood Flow: The surprising ways diet, breathing, and lifestyle impact circulation and overall well-being.
  • Managing Sensory Overload: How to recognize signs of overstimulation and practical techniques to restore balance.

Memorable Moments:

  • The Smell & Memory Connection: Why certain scents trigger strong emotional responses and how your brain processes them differently from other senses.
  • Brain Overload & Sensory Fatigue: How too much sensory input can shut down parts of the brain, leading to headaches, anxiety, and burnout.
  • The Circulatory System as a Highway: A simple analogy to understand how your heart, blood, and lymphatics transport oxygen, nutrients, and waste.
  • Boosting Nitric Oxide Naturally: The best foods and breathing techniques to improve circulation and heart health.

What to Expect in Future Episodes:

Next, we’ll explore pumping and purging—how your body pushes, filters, and eliminates what it doesn’t need to stay in balance.

Quote of the Episode:

“Your body is always perceiving and pulsing, adjusting and responding in ways you may never notice—but when you learn to tune in, you unlock a whole new level of health and vitality.”

Connect with Dr. Brook:

Tune in now to learn how your senses and circulation are shaping your health every second of the day!

The heart serves as your central pump to push oxygen-rich blood from your lungs and the nutrient-rich blood from the digestive system to every cell of the body. So I'm gonna break down each part. The oxygen-rich blood from the heart is essential for cellular respiration. Cellular respiration simply means the cell's ability to create energy. Welcome to the Body Speaks podcast with me, Dr. Brooke Sheehan. Join me on a journey in discovering how to interpret the subtle signs your body uses to communicate with you. The whispers, the screams, and everything in between. Your body truly holds the answers for your health and well-being. It's time to discover them together. Let's dive in. Hi friend, Dr. Brooke Sheehan with another episode of Your Body Speaks. We are talking about the perceiving and the pulsing and how your body interprets these signals.


It's always perceiving and it's always pulsing, and this continues our series on the innings, the amazing innings of your body. So, how does your body sense and respond to the world around it? How does your heart keep everything in motion? This episode, we are going to dive into that magic, but before we get started, let's briefly recap what we spoke about. Okay. In last week's episode, but before we get started, let's briefly talk about what we discussed in last episode. We spoke about the contracting of skeletal muscles, as well as the relaxation of those, right? And the connection of the nervous system and how all of those pieces form together to create the uniqueness of who we are. So let's get started with the very first inning of today's episode. Perceiving.


How does your body interpret signals from the external environment around it? And how is that information assimilated when it gets into the body? We are familiar, generally speaking, with five senses. This is something we hear about from an early age, maybe in younger grade school levels about five senses, our hearing, our smell, our sight, our touch, our taste, all of these signals. These senses are something that we have come to know and understand on a general level. But did you know, there's actually two extra senses that the body utilizes to perceive not only things that are going on in the internal environment, what's going on in the body, but also things to know about where it is in space. Those two different senses that we're going to talk about today as well.


So, a total of seven is going to be interoception, the body's internal ability to know signals that are happening inside. And then the external stuff with proprioception. How does your brain know that your hand is over here? Or when you're working on balancing, how does it know the rest of your body, where it is in that space? And we're going to talk about spatial awareness and how to increase your spatial awareness and help neurological connections. Because all of these innings that we're talking about are interconnected. So it's not a stair-step integration on top of each other with all the innings, but a total integration internally. Everything's coming together. They're all tied together. And we're just breaking them apart piece by piece as we're learning so that you can develop more awareness of what's going on in your body and the knowingness on what it is communicating with you.


I never want to get far away from what this podcast is all about. Your body speaks. It's constantly talking. It's constantly talking to us. And I've shared already four different concepts in the last two episodes on how it's doing that through the different processes like clearing, cleansing, connecting, and contracting. In today's episode, we're talking perceiving. And then we're going to go into pulsing. So we know what the five senses are. And we're going to be talking a little bit more about those other two new ones, interoception and proprioception. And we're going to be talking about right now, how these senses work together. How they work together to help us navigate the world around us and maintain homeostasis in our body. Homeostasis simply means just the balance. We got the ebb and flow inside of us.


So at times our blood sugar may be a little high and that's okay. And other times things may be lower. What we don't want is constant up and down spikes of things. We want ebb and flow, ebb and flow. There are going to be times when our temperature is going to increase because maybe we have a fever. There's going to be times when the temperature comes back down to normal. Ebb and flow, ebb and flow. The integration of senses in your body happens through an area of the thalamus in the brain. Thalamus sits right deep into the center. If I was to drill a hole, God forbid, but if I was to drill a hole through my skull on either side, I would hit the thalamus.


Thalamus, if we think about it in easy words, we can think about the thalamus like Grand Central Station. So all of the sensory input is coming into the thalamus and the thalamus then takes that information and it sends it to the other areas of the brain where it needs to go. So it's relaying the information. The only thing of all those senses I just mentioned to you, the only one that does not relay through the thalamus, that does not enter Grand Central Station, the sense of smell does not relay to the thalamus, which is actually kind of cool and actually kind of not cool at the same time. Hear me out. The cool part is, is the fact that it goes directly to the brain.


It's the reason why when you walk into a store or someone walks by you and you smell a certain cologne or perfume or certain scent, it triggers all of those areas in your brain that you start to remember whoever it was. Oh, I remember when my mom used to wear that perfume when we were a little girl. I remember being here. It starts triggering all these different memories because that sense of smell activated the brain right away, didn't relay through the thalamus, and you got this floodgate of emotions. You got the floodgate of memories open, and you're now kind of going down that road of like, whoa, and hopefully it's eliciting good memories. Although the sense of smell, when I say it's not so cool, can actually elicit bad memories, and it can send you down a dark, deep hole that you then have to like get yourself out of, utilizing mental and emotional techniques to pull yourself through that.


The other uncool thing about it going directly to the brain is that if you smell any sort of toxic chemicals or anything, you are getting exposed directly to the brain that's impacting you. So a lot of times it can elicit a headache right away or feelings of fatigue and so forth. So it's not a good thing in that regard, but there is a reason why we've been designed that way. And I want to quickly share this with you, is the sense of smell actually allows us the ability to be able to tell if something is sour, if something is poisonous, if something is not good for us. The fact that we have that sense of smell that we've been born with and generations long ago have had the same thing, is it was a protective mechanism.


So if there was an extra station, like Grand Central Station in the thalamus, that this sense had to go to, it took longer to get signaling back from the brain to determine whether that was good for us or not good for us. And so with that sense of smell being elevated the way that it is, it's a protective mechanism. So as the thalamus is integrating all of these signals, except for smell, it is allowing us to respond appropriately to what's happening. For instance, when we talk about touch, touch can be light, soft, massage, gentle touch. Touch can also show up as like brunt force, deep pressure, so forth. So our brain actually has a way of determining whether that was a nice, gentle, wow, this massage feels good, or oh my gosh, that person just punched me, or why did they push into my skin so hard?


All of those things, our brain has a way of interpreting those signals through that thalamus and integrating and allowing us to respond appropriately. Let's talk about right here some complementary functions of these systems. So, vision and proprioception. Proprioception, I mentioned briefly earlier, is the way our body is able to know where all of the limbs are in space. So if I was to be standing here on one foot, my body knows where the rest of my limbs are. If I put my hand far out away from my body or behind my back, my brain knows that my hand is behind my back because of this proprioception sense that we have. So vision and proprioception, work together this way. Our eyes, what we sense with our eyes, what we see with our eyes, helps us see where we're going.


Well, proprioception has the sense of where our body position is and it ensures coordinated movement. If you've ever walked, and we've all experienced this 100% across the board, where we are walking and we just trip, or we're walking and we run into something, we knew it was there, we saw it was there, but there was something that just got mismanaged in the brain and we end up tripping over our foot, or we end up crashing into the piece of furniture, and we're like, dang it, I knew it was there. That's just little hiccups in the neurological function of that. But those two work hand in hand. Proprioception works hand in hand with a lot of the other senses, but vision and proprioception definitely complement each other. Hearing and vision complement each other.


So sound actually helps us locate objects or events that may be out of sight. So we can hear certain things. As a mama, when you hear your baby crying, if your baby's in the other room, you hear that, and then the vision will identify the source of like, okay, it's coming from the bedroom, or that sound actually showed up in the kitchen. Is somebody else's kid here? Or what was that loud thump that hit the door, right? We are able to sense those things that are going on around us. We're able to perceive those things going on around us with hearing and vision complementing each other. Another one, touch and interoception. Interoception is the body's internal state. That is signaling different things. So internally, the body is sensing where things need to be.


So touch detects external changes like the temperature. While interoception monitors internal states like hunger or thirst. So the way that these work together is they guide responses like putting on a jacket when it's cold or drinking water when we're dehydrated. Those signals are telling us to do something based off what's going on internally, but sometimes, based off what's going on in the external, like putting on a jacket when it's cold outside, if it senses cold air. Another one for interoception to really kind of hammer this point home is the urge or the feeling that you have when you need to use the bathroom. Whether you need to release your bladder or your bowel movements, those are actually being signaled by the insides of the body. The bladder is filling up.


The cells are expanding on that bladder. As soon as they reach a point, it signals to the brain, we need to release this. You cannot stop your bladder signals from going off. They're going to go off. And eventually, you're going to have to use the bathroom despite all of the time you try to put it off. And you're like, no, I'm standing in line for my favorite movie. I don't want to get out of line. But you eventually have to at some point or another. We've all been in situations like that. And that's interoception going on in your body. But what happens when there is too much sensory information coming in? This is a concept called sensory overload. And it is a very, very real thing. It happens if there's too much touch.


It happens if there's too many things coming into the eyes. It happens if there's so much loud stimuli, noise coming in. All of these different things. There could be a sensory overload in flavors in your mouth. Like, oh my gosh, every seasoning was used in this dish. I can't even sort through what's here. It's like throwing your whole system out. What happens when we enter into those sensory overload phenomenons? Our brain starts to shut things down. It is getting overly stimulated that it begins to almost try to quiet the noise as best as it can. And when I say noise, I'm not just talking about the noise of you hearing my voice right now. I'm talking about noise in the sense of all of the stimuli coming in at you at one time.


So the brain goes into overload. Over sensory mode. And it starts kicking off those breakers. The breakers in your house that the lights shut off when you have too much electricity running through an electrical circuit. The brain will do that kind of stuff because it can no longer handle everything that's coming at it. A lot of symptoms that will show up when these senses get overwhelmed are like physical fatigue, headaches, anxiety, tension. You start feeling like you're going to start sweating. Like breaking out in a profuse sweat. You may not be able to keep the food that you just ate in your belly. It may be coming up. Or you might feel nauseous. All of these things can happen if there's too much sensory input coming into the brain.


And the brain has a beautiful way of having this symphony of gas pedal, brake pedal. Gas pedal, brake pedal. Gas pedal, brake pedal. And so it's got these on switches and these off switches. On switches and off switches. We do not want our nervous system going into red lines. Red line means it's way up here. Ready to just get triggered every step of the way. This is what you see happen with highly sensitive people. And I don't mean highly sensitive in the emotional capacity. I mean highly sensitive people who wear certain clothing and they can feel every single texture of every single fabric line on it. Or they feel the tags. They're very sensitive to that. Or they have to wear dark glasses when they go into the room because their eyes are just picking up.


They're picking up so many signals. Or they're wearing earplugs when they're at concerts. They're wearing earplugs if they're at church during a worship service. They're doing all these things to try to bring that sensory load down because their brain is just getting fired up, fired up, fired up. And it's having a hard time working through this. So how can we care for our senses? Every single one of them. All five that we already know about. And the two new ones that I just shared with you. Interoception and proprioception. How can we keep our senses cared for in the digital age? One tip for sight. If you're getting overwhelmed by so much stimulus coming into your eyes, following the 20-20-20 rule is very helpful.


This is especially helpful for people who are working in front of screens all the time. Not only is it a good idea to have a set of blue blockers and utilize blue blocker glasses when you are staring at screens, but also incorporating the 20-20-20 rule. So you look 20 feet away for 20 seconds every 20 minutes. So, you've been looking on your screen for a long time. Then, you look 20 feet away for 20 seconds and then come back to your screen. And that will help support your eyes. And that will really quiet down a lot of the sensory information coming into the brain. The other thing for sound is wearing headphones in loud settings. So I don't think it's a bad idea to wear headphones when you're at work.


At concerts, or when you're in really loud settings. Or monitoring your headphone volume levels. You don't want to have your headphones super loud. Another thing you can do for touch is to use a weighted blanket, a compression vest, or apply firm, gentle pressure to calm your nervous system and help regulate the sensory input. Also, one thing I do want to note here is having an eye mask with the compression vest or the weighted blanket. Even if you can lie down, if you're able to in your day at that moment in time, for 5 minutes, it can really help regulate the nervous system. So having the eye mask on with the weighted blanket and then doing your 4, 7, 8 breathing, about 4 reps of that, during that time, it will help you get your nervous system back into balance a lot quicker and help you become more resilient.


We're working on creating resiliency. We're working on creating understanding of our body's signals and how to tune into those. And listen and understand, like, oh my goodness, I may be having a headache coming on. Maybe I'm getting too much of these signals coming through. Let me see how I can support my body in this moment so that I don't end up in high redline zone and I don't end up having to have the compression weighted blanket on and the mask over my eyes and doing the 4, 7, 8 breathing because these are things we can pretty much stop in its track. Generally speaking, most of the time, the more we become in tune with these signals, the more we become in tune with these senses and the symptoms that may be associated with it.


So what I'd like you to do over the course of these next few days is to really reset and refocus by engaging each of these senses deliberately. So the first thing with sight is what I want you to do is begin to notice five objects around you. Don't overthink this. Don't put so much thought into it. Just look at the five objects around you and make mental note of those. There's a water bottle. There's my computer. There's this. There's that. And there's that. Just five things. There could be way more than five things around you, but notice the five things in your environment. Touch. I want you to feel the texture of an object or your own personal clothing. So if you're wearing something, touch it. Feel it.


Really sense into it-wow, that feels rough or that's really soft. Sound. I want you to identify three distinct sounds in your environment. With this one, it may require you to actually tune yourself down. Sometimes in our environment, there's all kinds of birds chirping and we have no idea. Other times, there's a lot of loud noise in our environment and our brain has quieted the stimuli of that loud noise because it can't handle so much stuff coming in. I want you to elevate that a little bit as you're thinking about the sounds around you. Elevate your hearing. Go, wow, I actually am hearing this sound and this sound and this sound. You'll hear very distinct sounds around you that you may not even have been aware of.


With the sense of smell, I want you to take a moment to inhale and recognize nearby scents. I mentioned earlier how cool and how uncool the fact that the sense of smell goes directly to the brain can be. And so a lot of times when we get triggered by scent, we can go down a really good emotional road or we can go down a really dark road. In your environment, make it a clean environment. Maybe go outside. Maybe go to a nearby park and see what you can smell. You'll be so surprised at what sense actually come through. With taste, I want you to mindfully sip a drink or mindfully eat your food. Really chew it. Really savor the flavors.


See if you can pinpoint exactly what is in there, whether a little bit of cumin or I can taste the salt. I can taste the pepper. Wow, like did somebody put coriander in there? What's going on in here? Really taste the flavor. Really savor those flavors, but also feel the texture in your mouth. This is enhancing your senses, enhancing your body awareness. As we develop the intuitiveness of being able to interpret what our body is saying, one way we do it is by tuning into the senses inside our body. Another thing with interoception, the inside of our body's ability to know what is going on with it, I want you to honor your body's cues. Don't try to push through with signals. It's telling you something for a reason.


So if you start tuning inwardly into your body and think, 'Is my bladder full? Do I feel my bladder kind of filling up? Not in a weird kind of way, but you know, sometimes we have those inkling feelings like, yeah, I should probably use the restroom. And other times maybe we don't feel anything or am I thirsty? Am I a little dehydrated?' Did I drink enough water today? Tune into those interoceptive responses. Your body is telling you something. And the last one with proprioception, the way to reset and refocus your attention on this is through playing sports. Although if you're playing a really fast combat sport, it might be hard for you to be like, oh, my hand's over here or my leg's over there, so forth.


But playing sports, solving puzzles, picking up a puzzle piece from one side of the table and putting it into the other, your brain knows exactly where your hand is, where your legs are. Resistance exercises, games like Twister, playing games like Twister, doing some balance training, all of those things help heighten your spatial awareness, heighten your proprioception state. They send good signals to the brain when we do this refocus and reset. So we're not doing anything to overstimulate your nervous system. We want that nervous system really balanced, but we want to engage with our senses. We want to engage with the beautiful perception ability that God has given us so that we can be better in tune with what our body is saying to us.


Because one day you're going to wake up and you're going to get a clear signal from your body about something that it wants or that it's asking for, and you'll know exactly what to do because you've been developing this awareness with it. Moving into our next P for today's episode is pulsing. And this is all about our circulatory system, the way blood moves through our body. We're going to talk briefly about the lymphatics. I know we talked about that two episodes back and how the lymphatics is moving things through the body, but this is all interconnected to our circulatory system. Our circulatory system functions. Most people think the heart and yes, the heart has a big job in all of that, but it is more than just our heart.


There are so many other factors and key pieces, and our ability to keep pulsing as we go. The heart is pumping roughly a hundred thousand times a day, a hundred thousand times a day. It is pumping, pumping, pumping. Whether that is pumping deeply, deoxygenated blood to the lungs, and then getting it back and pumping it out to the body as oxygenated blood, and then bringing all that information back into the heart and clearing through heart, lungs, going to the rest of the body, all the things. The heart serves as your central pump to push oxygen-rich blood from your lungs, and the nutrient-rich blood from the digestive system to every cell of the body. So I'm going to break down each part. The oxygen-rich blood from the heart is essential for cellular respiration.


Cellular respiration simply means the cell's ability to create energy. We need energy for our bodies to function. We need energy for our bodies to thrive, to go, to move, to do its thing, for all of the processes to go. All of our connecting, all of our clearing, all of our contracting, all of our cleansing. All of these things require our energy levels to be up. So that oxygen-rich blood is allowing those cells to do that mechanism of making energy. The other thing is I mentioned the nutrient blood. So the heart serves as a central pump to take that nutrient rich blood and move it through the system so that we can use it for energy, but more importantly, we can use it for growth and repair. So let's look at it this way.


The nutrients from the foods we eat, so we eat carbohydrates, we eat fats, we eat protein, and then we have all of our micronutrients, all of the small littler pieces, but those macronutrients get broken down into smaller components. Smaller components get pulled from the digestive tract and moved into the blood system and then moved into different tissues to be able to cause that growth and repair. We need that to be happening. We want to be absorbing the food we eat. It's not about what you eat. There's a saying that goes, you are what you eat, but you aren't what you eat. You are actually what you absorb. So if you're not absorbing what you're eating, and I'm going to get deep into the digestive system here in a few episodes, but we want that nutrient-rich blood to be moved through the circulatory system to get into the cells that it needs to get into to move to that area.


This is the way the lymphatic system works. This is the way the immune system works, how it moves things through the blood system to get to different areas of the body. Think of your circulatory system as the freeways and the road systems, the highways of the body. Part of this circulation system is the ability to remove waste products, waste products in the form of carbon dioxide, urea, and other debris. So carbon dioxide is carried to the lungs and then exchanged for oxygen and exhaled out of the body. If you've taken any basic junior high, middle school course of science, you'll know that we humans, exhale carbon dioxide, whereas plants, green living trees, all those vegetation, they breathe in carbon dioxide and release oxygen. So it's this beautiful symbiotic relationship between plants and humans.


We exhale carbon dioxide, which is what they need. It's a waste product for us; it's not a good product for us. They release oxygen, which is a waste product of theirs. So cool. I love how beautifully designed it was. The other thing is there's metabolic waste. There's metabolic waste from the food that we eat. One of the specific metabolic waste products that I do want to mention here is urea. Urea is a metabolic waste product that comes from the breakdown of protein. So when you eat protein, protein is the only macronutrient that has a nitrogen atom attached to it. Not getting into the biochem weeds, come with me for one second. It has a nitrogen molecule added to a protein.


The body then rips that nitrogen off and then is able to break down that protein into all of the essential amino acids, the building blocks that we need to keep our bodies functioning. That urea, the nitrogen that was removed off, that urea gets then filtered through the kidneys and the kidneys release it in the urine. We need this waste and debris removed from the body. This is all moved through these highways, these freeway systems, these road systems of the body. And last but not least, the lymphatic system, part of this highway, roadway system in the body that does remove cellular debris and excess fluid so that there's no buildup. We don't want a buildup of waste in the tissues.


So how does a good circulatory system that is moving good oxygenated blood through the system and then bringing deoxygenated blood back up to the system, if we have proper flow, if we have all these things and then all the waste products being removed, the urea, the excess cellular waste, the carbon dioxide, all of these things, all the waste coming out, when we have this, there's overall vitality. There's cognitive function is great. Physical performance is improved. You're able to work out longer and do better workouts. You're able to have peak performance. You're able to think clearly. You're able to digest food better when this system is cleared. So none of these things operate in isolation of each other. They're all, again, interconnected. We need them all working well.


Our circulatory system needs a molecule called nitric oxide. And nitric oxide is defined as a molecule that helps blood vessels relax, which improves blood flow. So we have vasoconstriction, the vessels tightening, which is pumping more blood through. When you have that constriction, it's pumping it through quicker. When we have vasodilation, it's expanding in size, allowing blood, more blood to get through, but it's not moving as quickly. If we think about a kinked hose, if you kink that hose, God forbid, we do not want any of your blood vessels kinked, but come with me for one more journey. If that hose is kinked and we release the kink, it's going to spray water everywhere with quick, fast, lot of pressure. That is what happens when your blood vessels are constricted.


When they're dilated, the blood flow is just moving more quickly. More consistently, like if you just had the hose turned on and no kink in it, it's just water flowing. We need vasoconstriction and dilation in healthy amounts. Everything, just like we have with the nervous system, gas pedal, brake pedal, gas pedal, brake pedal. We need constriction and we need dilation. Nitric oxide helps the blood vessels relax. This improves blood flow. Most of us are living in a state of elevated vasoconstriction, tightening of those blood vessels because we're in a high state of stress. We're sending blood to our arms and to our legs so we can run from a predator that's after us when in reality, we probably should be more in our vasodilation or relaxation state. Nitric oxide helps with that.


Nitric oxide actually, from an embryological standpoint, it has been shown in studies that even before the nervous system is formed, we know now that nitric oxide is kind of orchestrating a lot of what's going on in the circulatory system as the heart starts pumping before the brain is even developed. How freaking cool is the human body? How amazing is it that we have all of these chemical messengers inside the body? Nitric oxide is a chemical messenger. Some of the ways to naturally boost nitric oxide is to eat nitrate-rich foods. Nitrate-rich foods are beets, beet juices, leafy greens, like spinach, arugula, kale, Swiss chard. Celery also supports hydration, so celery can help with nitric oxide production because it helps with hydration, radishes, and carrots. The other things that are also helpful are pomegranate and garlic.


Those two are also helpful, although they don't contain nitric oxide, they have the building blocks that helps you build nitric oxide and help you have healthy nitric oxide flow in your body. Another thing that helps increase nitric oxide is 4-7-8 breathing. If you know anything about Dr. Burchard, she'll always tell you about 4-7-8 breathing. 4-7-8 breathing. So 4-7-8 breathing, if you didn't catch any of the prior episodes when I talked about this, is 4 seconds inhale, 7 seconds hold, 8 seconds exhale. When you are exhaling, double the amount of the inhale. So we inhaled for 4 seconds, now we're exhaling for 8. When you're doing that, you're actually kicking your body more into that parasympathetic state, that rest and digest state. So you're not only increasing your nitric oxide, but you are helping your blood vessels dilate.


You're getting more blood into the tissues, you're helping these freeways, these roadways of your body move, so we're not in a traffic jam or dealing with road construction and traffic is being diverted off into minor streets and things are not functioning the way that they should and you can't understand why you have brain fog. Well, that could be a big reason. One thing to avoid if you're looking to keep your nitric oxide levels up and more of that relaxation state of your blood vessels is to avoid toxic mouthwashes. Now I say toxic mouthwashes because I'm thinking about things like Listerine and all the ones that you would find at CVS, your drugstores. Those things are choked full of chemicals that clear, that wipe that good microbiome out of your mouth and make it harder for you to produce nitric oxide naturally.


Better alternatives would be to find a very healthy mouthwash. You can simply look those up online. Healthy mouthwash that does not clear the microbiome of the mouth and those would be better to use if you are a mouthwash user. Wrapping it all up, simple habits for better circulation. I want to share some actionable steps you can take. We've learned about how the circulatory system works, how the flow happens, and the benefits of nitric oxide and what it does. So how can we improve our circulatory system while incorporating all of the foods that I listed that help with nitric oxide? One of the ways is to elevate your legs to improve the deoxygenated blood return to the heart. Our legs are fighting against gravity and our legs have little pumps in them that pump blood back up to the heart.


And so that mechanism of that pumping is helping that blood return back to the heart. But if we've been on our feet all day or we went for a really long walk, elevating your feet can help with that venous return, that deoxygenated blood return back up to the heart. If you notice any swelling in your ankles, you can use compression socks to help get that pumping mechanism going. However, as a caveat, I do want to say if you've had chronic swelling in your legs, this can be indicative of a circulatory issue or lymphatic drainage problem and definitely something you want to think about getting checked out, not to really look at on your own accord because there might be something you can do more quickly to help get that cleared up, cleaned up, and not experiencing those issues.


If it's happening very rarely and it is something you do notice after a walk or you're pregnant, that tends to happen when you're pregnant, that's when elevating your legs and doing compression socks can be extra helpful. But I would say to do those kind of things even if you're not noticing the swelling is definitely elevating your legs. The other thing is to incorporate regular movement. So if you are somebody who's sitting at a desk all day long and you're not getting up and being mobile and moving around and you're sitting for long periods, incorporating movement, walking, all of that, that's going to get good blood flow, good circulatory flow through your system. And cold water exposure. One of the things I want to say here is there is such a huge health craze for cold plunging and there's a lot of great things.


There's a lot of great benefits for it and I can pull up study after study, PDF picture after PDF picture to say, yeah, look at all the benefits of cold plunging. If you've been a listener of mine for a while, if this is the first episode you're listening to, you know or you will know that one of my biggest things, one of the things that Dr. Brooke speaks about and will speak about until her deathbed is that every single one of us is unique. And so just doing something because of X, Y, and Z, study this PDF, da-da-da-da, and trying to incorporate all these things into your life to where it becomes a full-time job. You're trying to cold plunge. You're lymphatic brushing. You're doing all the workouts.


You're doing breathing exercises in Tibet. You're like all these things happening. That's not realistic. That's not sustaining. That's not what it looks like. It is not an all or nothing approach. It is an approach that works for your body. And as you develop the tools and as I work through the framework to help you develop the tools to understand this better, you will gain a better awareness self-awareness of what's truly going on with you so that you can filter through all the noise in the industry. I digress. Coming back on track, when I say try cold water exposure, one thing that you can do easily is if you're taking your hot shower in the morning, you don't have to do this every single day of the week, but turning the faucet onto cold for about 20 to 30 seconds.


Now you can start out really small and then gradually go up every other shower and so forth, because it definitely can very much shock your system, even 20 seconds. Oh my gosh, because you just went from hot. But that can be very helpful to stimulate blood flow because when your body is heated up, your blood vessels are going to do something different than when they're more cold. If they're cold, they're going to be doing something different. So they're vasoconstricting and vasodilating at different temperatures. Awesome. Thank you so much for taking this journey with me. I am so glad you made it this far. I'm so glad you're continuing to learn. I love listening to these episodes and sharing all of the beautiful things that you're learning with me.


It just honestly, I have to say it just warms my heart to hear that kind of feedback. And we're going to be talking about the pumping mechanism. Yes, we talked about heart as a big pumper, but really what we're talking about is the pulsing mechanism of the circulatory system. So in next episode, we're going to be talking about the pumping, like really getting into that pumping mechanism, but not just with the heart, because there are more organs in your body that do pumping than just the heart. And we're going to dive deep into that. We're also going to be talking about the purging, how your body purges. What does that look like in terms of elimination and getting rid of gunk and things that you don't need so that you can thrive and do all that you need to do this year and beyond.


So that being said, please do like, subscribe, share this, write a review, really do any and all those fun things. It helps spread the word and gets this message far and wide. And we really want more people to understand that they too have that same intelligence within them, that their body will talk to them and their body will tell them what needs to be done because your body speaks and their body speaks. Talk to you later. Have a really blessed day.