April 25, 2024 • 30 mins
Can our minds really shape our bodily health? Join me and my co-host Justin on a journey through the intricate dance of mental well-being and physical health on Balance Blueprints. We tackle the silent ways chronic mental stress may be contributing to insulin resistance and other health issues, offering a glimmer of hope by examining the mysteriously resilient individuals who, despite poor diets, manage to avoid type 2 diabetes. Our conversation delves into the power of perception and the necessity for balance between acknowledging unhealthy habits and the counterproductive stress of health perfectionism.
As we wander further down the path of mind-body connections, we discover the true cost of chronic stress—not only on our mental state but on our very physiology. It's not just a game of watching your carb intake; fitting in regular activity can significantly dampen stress's harmful effects. We'll show you that you don't need a hefty bank account to stay healthy and stress-free. Simple actions can work wonders, and we discuss how walking and mindfulness can be just as valuable as any high-priced health fad.
Before we part ways, let's not forget the potent ritual of positive reflection, especially at day's end. Justin and I share our personal experiences with writing down even the smallest of daily wins, shedding light on how this simple act can rewire our thoughts towards the positive, helping us to slip into a more restful sleep and greet the morning with renewed balance. So come share your triumphs with us as we continue to navigate the road towards balanced freedom, episode by episode.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Balance Blueprints podcast,
where we discuss optimaltechniques for health and
finances and then break it downto create an individualized and
balanced plan.
I'm your host, John Propper,here with my co-host, Justin
Gaines.
In this episode, Justin and Italk about part two of the
psychology of food.
If you haven't listened to partone, we suggest listening,
because in this episode we takea deeper dive into how your mind
(00:22):
affects certain biologicalmechanisms that changes your
biology.
Thanks so much for listeningand we hope you enjoy and that's
a perfect segue into how thesethings kind of work in the body.
So I'll use that, if that'sgood, because we always think of
diabetes or insulin resistanceas a food problem, and we'll go
(00:44):
into some of the pathways hereof just literally how chronic
mental stress can cause it.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Well, it's like if you don't think you have a
problem.
You might not have a problem.
But you have these people whoeat terrible on paper.
They're terrible diets, highsugar.
They should have type 2diabetes.
How do they not have type 2diabetes?
But if they don't see it as aproblem, this is suggesting that
if they don't see it as aproblem, it might not be a
problem for them right, right,right and long term.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
I just I can't fully get behind the idea that the
mind can outpower everythingelse, but I definitely think
it's stronger, but that stuffwill catch up to that and I
still firmly believe that.
But it can make you stayhealthy.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
I think that.
I think that shows you know youcan have somebody who's happy
and mentally healthy, who'soverweight, but there's still a
direct core.
You know, if you look at theoverweight population, we're're
talking high obesity levels.
Their mortality tables, theirlife expectancy, is way less
(01:52):
than somebody who is consideredat the appropriate weight.
And so that's going to takeinto effect your whole range of
spectrum of people who do thinkit's a problem, don't think it's
a problem or indifferent.
So yes it has a long-termimpact, but how much of an
impact?
Speaker 1 (02:09):
yeah.
Well, that's where we'regetting into the conversation of
like everything matters andnothing matters.
So let's find like a middleground, because this all of this
talk made me think about.
This is an unrelated study, butthey did a recent study that
showed I don't want to get itwrong, let me just talk through
it to see when it comes out, ifI remember it, that smokers with
(02:30):
yeah, smokers with high dh, epaand dha, so eating a lot of
omega-3 fatty acids from fish,had a better life expectancy
than non-smokers who had lowlevels of that it's fun, so it's
funny.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
You say that the 10x health guy I'm looking up his
name right now, gary brekka,he's a guy who runs the 10x
health systems he's on.
There's a recording of himsaying that, um, if you're
physically you know, if you'rephysically active and you smoke
and you drink, you'll outlivethe person who's not physically
(03:11):
active.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Yeah, and that gets into the whole.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
it matters and it doesn't matter If you're the
right weight and you just eatright or maybe you don't even
eat, right, you eat moderately.
Well, you're at a good BMI.
You're at a good weight.
You could be outlived bysomebody who smokes and drinks
all the time but goes and has aconsistent workout regimen and
(03:38):
eats the same way you do.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
The only difference is they smoke and drink, but
they also work out way more thanyou do.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Those two things will make it, so they'll live longer
than you will.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
The point of all of this is to play into that.
There's a happy medium andwe're getting into a health
world space where everything'sbeing demonized.
They're making you feel bad forevery little thing and it's
like you want to do the besthabits you can.
Quote, unquote.
(04:07):
Let's come up with a randomnumber 80 percent of the time,
because there's a lot of peoplethat do the best habits they can
and then once a year, when theyeat out or when they eat seed
oils once or so, much stressbecause they think it's killing
them and it's like no, theperson that probably eats three
times the amount of seed seedoils as you, but it is just
happy and comfortable and livingwell may outlive you because
(04:29):
you know you're causing so muchstress but it's crazy because
a lot of us go through it in inthe health world, because I saw
a different account talkingabout this and at first it
aggravated me because I was likeyou know, I don't get it.
Why are we quote, unquotepromoting or saying it's okay to
(04:51):
do these things because theyare unhealthy?
It's like I guess we're notreally saying it's okay to do
these things.
We're saying you're gonna havejust as good a chance, if not
better, of a long, healthy lifeif, when they happen the things
that when they happen, say we'lljust just say smoking, I don't,
alcohol, you know whatever,whatever you want in there, when
(05:12):
they happen, if you don'tstress about them, you're going
to be fine.
Um, so it's tough because thehealth world, especially with
online, we're seeing such a hugeshift of so much demonization,
so much you have to be perfect,so much this and all this is
going against us.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Are you personally happy with your actions?
Are you okay with what you'redoing?
Do you think you're workingtowards the best version of
yourself?
If you do, you probably are,you know, even if you are eating
mcdonald's twice a week andyou're only working out once a
week.
But you, you know that you'redoing the right thing and you
know you're working towards theright place, and you tell
(05:47):
yourself that you have theself-love.
It sounds like that is moreimportant than cutting out, you
know, adding another workout dayor cutting out another cheat
day.
It's more important that youself-love, your, you know, have
the self-love working towardsthe best version of yourself and
are happy and everyone's scaleis different.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
You know that's that's the thing is.
The whole point of thisconversation is there's not one
right way, like I would say.
The only two wrong ways arewanting to be a hundred percent
perfect and beating yourself upwhen you're not, and not caring
at all and doing every unhealthyhabit.
I would say those are the onlytwo wrong ways that I feel
confident saying.
But then everything in betweenis like a where do you want to
(06:28):
fall on that scale?
Why do you want to fall on thatspot and what are your future
goals?
Cause, like you figure thosethings out, it's like, yeah, I
want to be more towards the endof quote, unquote, impossible
perfection, but that's becauseif I'm towards that end, I feel
better day to day and then I canreconcile when I do things that
aren't and the other personmight just be like again, I
(06:49):
don't fully agree with thisbecause they got to ask them to
help fly.
But the YOLO person like youonly live once.
It's like sure, you know ifthat's really what you believe
and makes you happy and you'vecome to terms with that, you
might live a long happy, healthylife that way, I guess.
Maybe, happy, healthy life thatway, I guess, and maybe the
true yolo is, but not caring atall so who knows?
Speaker 2 (07:09):
but you know, there's the those both ends.
Yeah, yeah, um, all right sointeresting, though, that the
focus there is on, you know,being present and asking
yourself do I firmly believethat I'm working towards a
better version of myself and?
And if the answer is yes,you're probably working towards
the best.
You're probably in the besthealth position that you can be
(07:31):
in, because you're going tocontinue to improve, but if
you're beating yourself up, it'snot going to work out well for
you.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Right.
Well, that's my only challengeto people that promote or just
say you should never worry abouteating fast food or this or
that.
You know that's.
My only question to them is whyare you doing that, like?
Ask yourself why?
Because in my mind, self-loveis taking care of yourself and
you know that food's not bad.
(08:00):
But at the same time, theperson that's doing all those
things and has no self-love andbeats themselves up, it's like
you know, we're also not at agood spot.
So, yeah, it's, it's.
It's hard because delicatebalance, such a delicate balance
, but to bring us so what wewere going to talk about so many
fun things, but we transitionedinto how things are actually
(08:21):
happening in the body throughthe processes and and Justin
brought up and we're going totalk about it but how chronic
stress affects so many pathways.
I have a nice diagram here, butwe'll start with a very common
one, but insulin resistance,high blood sugar.
So I'll just read through somethings here.
When you're under chronic stress, a lot of these processes in
(08:43):
the body go up and I'll explainwhat they are.
But if you think about it,ancient times we would see a
tiger.
A lot of stresses we had wereacute, quick stresses so the
body would up, regulate a lot ofthings so we could run, so we
could have energy and and stressI think itself has gotten a
(09:05):
quote unquote bad rep becauseit's not the stress, like that's
actually very good that thoseprocesses happen because they
allowed us to run away and live.
I think it's our perception ofstress and that acute stress
that everyone demonizes Is onlybad when it happens chronically,
which is what's happening today, like we are not very different
than who we were a hundred or athousand years ago as humans,
(09:30):
but our environment iscompletely different.
So you know, we are notprogrammed for this low level
chronic stress that we're seeingfrom social media jobs,
mortgages, all this stuff andit's causing that acute response
to become chronic and that'swhen we're seeing a lot of
problems.
(09:50):
That's kind of the intro thereand that leads into it, because
one of the things that happensis when we go into a sympathetic
state so a more fight, stay orflight our blood sugar goes up
and it gets broken down becauseit wants to shove sugar into the
cells so they have energy torun.
This causes the need forinsulin to rise, because when
(10:14):
you have sugar in the blood itcan't just go into cells.
Insulin needs to transport itinto the cells.
And then if there's chronichigh blood sugar, because you're
chronically stressed, your bodycontinually makes things it
needs the sugar, because it'sagain think it needs to run away
constantly eventually thesecells kind of turn off to the
(10:36):
sugar because they're like we'renot even utilizing it.
You constantly make it and youkeep shoveling it into the cells
, but it's not a physical stress, it's a mental.
But it's not a physical stress,it's a mental stress.
So it's not being utilized.
It causes a problem.
Yeah, so just so I was wrappingit up, but I have it here is um
(10:59):
.
So chronic stress can causeinsulin, insulin resistance,
because the body continuallythinks it's in fight or flight.
So it continually thinks itneeds to run or fight and cells
can only handle so much sugarbefore they actually shut down.
And they shut down causinginsulin resistance because the
mitochondria in those cells needa break.
So it's the same exact processas if your body is eating too
(11:22):
much sugar and doesn't know whatto do with it.
Again, I think this is the wholething of people demonize carbs.
It's like I don't think carbsare that bad if we're utilizing
them, if we are in an insulinsensitive state, meaning we're
fit, we're active, like our bodycan use those.
It's not the carb, it's ourbody.
But the same exact pathway ishappening in the mind even
(11:44):
though you're not ingesting aton of carbs, the mind's finding
places in the body, or thebody's finding sugar stores, and
breaking them down and puttingthem into your blood system so
your cells can use them,thinking you're having acute
physical stresses, but you'rejust under chronic mental stress
.
So I'm out of breath.
(12:04):
But that's wild.
I'm out of breath but that'swild.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
No, it is interesting because, yeah, when you bring
in the fight or flight responseand you bring in, you know that
caveman mind, you know thelimbic brain sitting there and
creating that's what's causingsome of these diabetic issues
and high insulin issues as aresult of your body needing to
get away and you just not beingable to because you're not
moving your body to get rid ofit, because it's a mental stress
.
It's not something you actuallyneed to run away from, right,
it's not something you actuallyneed to run away from.
It's typically something youneed to deal with on a mental
level or just get done at workor whatever the case may be
there's something on yourchecklist.
That you haven't done becauseyou've been putting it off and
that's causing you to bestressed out about it.
There's no ability to actuallygo run away from it and burn up
(13:07):
that sugar.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
That's very interesting how that plays a
role into this piece of thepuzzle and I can't imagine that
it's more prevalent or importantthan overeating tons of high
sugary food that we see in theworld.
But it explains those weirdcases of maybe more fit or thin
individuals that have insulinresistance and you're just
thinking how or why.
But you know their lifestyle is, has extreme amounts of mental
(13:34):
stress and that's never lookedat.
You know it explains thosestranger cases right, right.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Well, I think it also explains why 10 000 steps or
just going for a walk is sopivotal.
Because if you're under, youknow if you're in a office
environment or you know anenvironment where you're not up
and moving around.
So we're talking, you knowwhite collar jobs, not the blue
collar jobs where you're under alot of that mental, physical
stress mental stress, notphysical stress but you're
(14:01):
sitting at a desk so you don'thave the opportunity to get away
from it going for that walkallows you to burn through some
of that sugar and some of those,you know, use up some of that
insulin that you've produced inorder for you to then regulate
back down because you'veconsumed it via the, via the
exercise that you've done.
That's why the walking pads at adesk, I think, have played such
(14:22):
a large role, just by you know.
This is all just coming to meright now from what you're
saying.
With these research, it justmakes sense that our body's put
into basically a call forphysical response, but our body
doesn't realize that it's amental response.
So we need to introduce thephysical response in order to
balance out what our body'sproducing and telling us to do,
(14:45):
but we don't actually takeaction on.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
And that's.
That's another reason, too, whyI think people don't believe
half of this stuff of like.
When you say, oh, go for a walkat your lunch break, like how
much could that help.
But when you're thinking aboutit you're like it could help in
terms of exercise, it could helpin terms of a mental break, it
can help in terms of gettingnatural light.
These simplest things have sucha big impact but they're so
(15:10):
hard to believe that they have.
But there's so many factorsplaying in there.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Like you said, if you're in an office all day
under artificial blue light,constant mental stress, not
moving, it's like, yeah, a walkdoes wonders, it's interesting
too, because this whole podcastis about how this whole podcast
is about how you know, thiswhole podcast being this episode
part one, part two, however, itbreaks down, but these episodes
being about very little thingsthat make a very large
(15:39):
difference.
They're almost magnifiers.
You know, going for the walkbecause of the mental stress
capacity, visual visualizingthings, having the right mental
mindset magnifies theconsequences of these actions.
You know, if you're not eatingwell but you have the mindset
that it's okay, it decreases theimpact.
(16:00):
If you have the mindset thatit's not okay and you're not
eating well, that's going tohave a worse impact.
So it almost seems like mindsetis an amplifier of whatever you
are doing.
So if you're doing somethingthat's negative but you have a
positive mindset, those start tocancel each other out a little
bit.
But if they're the same anegative and a negative, or a
(16:20):
positive and a positive thoseare going to multiply.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Right.
I think in terms of diet, it'slike a person who's you know, if
you're at terms and okay witheverything's not organic and
these eggs are just cage free,you know.
It's like those are the thingswhere, if you're okay with that,
it's actually going to bebetter for you.
Like you need to come to termswith.
You're doing the best you canat the moment.
(16:44):
We don't need to stress outversus the other one and guess
what?
We'll play into the financialside here.
All of these things are free.
You know they want to tell youhow expensive health is.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
It's like master, these things, yeah you know,
yeah, go for a walk and do somemeditation, or, you know,
visualize things.
That doesn't cost you a pennyfree.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
So, um, the other thing that I brought up earlier
too, just a pathway here is,here is so we'll go like I was
saying, a lot of the processesin the body get upregulated
Lipolysis, glucose gettingconverted to pyruvate, lipolysis
, triglycerides in the fattyacids, just a bunch of things
here that I'm just kind ofglossing over.
But lipolysis, an important one, triglycerides in the body
(17:35):
people may know that one becauseit's on, I think, a cholesterol
test usually when you go intothe doctor but triglycerides get
converted into fatty acids intothe body.
That happens, that increaseswhen there's chronic stress and
that increase can lead to or bea cause of non-alcoholic fatty
liver disease.
That's something we've seenwhen people eat too much sugar.
But it's crazy because we'reseeing this in people that may
(18:00):
just have way too much chronicstress.
And it was funny because acouple weeks ago I got a message
from someone that their doctorsaid they had non-alcoholic
fatty liver disease.
And we just thought that'sweird.
They're in good shape, they'renot overweight, must have been a
mistake.
And then I take this course andI'm just seeing that and I'm
(18:21):
like wild Because I know someother factors around it.
It's like that could be a bigreason.
It's just the mental, thestress in your life has just
such a huge impact and, I think,can explain so many things for
the people that think, oh, I'mhealthy, why me?
Or I'm doing everything right,or why me or you know it's?
(18:43):
It doesn't make sense, it'slike it does.
You just gotta look a little,look a little deeper.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
I think even my the heart condition issue that I had
, like we never.
I never got any real answers onthat, but I still think about
it and I was definitely at thehighest stress load I was ever
at in my life at that time pointand so I think there was
definitely a mental stress loadcomponent to it.
And this is where I think youknow there's multiple factors at
(19:09):
play here, right Plus learningnow that caffeine consumption
pulls magnesium out of your body.
Magnesium plays a large role inheart health.
So at my caffeine levels,because of my stress load and
the hours I was working, I washigh caffeine levels, depleting
my magnesium, not taking amagnesium supplement.
Coupled with the stress and nothaving like a positive frame
(19:32):
set around that, it was like I'mat, I'm at my highest stress
point and it is not good and I'maware of that.
Those things again amplified anda seemingly healthy, fit,
physically active, good diettotally 20s yeah ends up in the
hospital with what was perceivedas a heart attack, gets a whole
bunch of stuff and actually hasa heart issue and now it's
(19:57):
resolved and then six monthslater, oh, you don't have a
heart issue anymore, it'scompletely resolved.
And it's weird, you know.
But what?
yeah, and that throws youthrough a loop in itself but now
that we we're talking aboutthis, what changed in that six
period?
Six month period I was workingwith doctors.
I was in the mindset of like,what am I do, what can I do to
get out of this, what can I doto heal myself?
And so you're positivelyframing everything, getting out
(20:19):
of that stress, managing thestress, being in a positive
mindset, and then boom, sixmonths later you get an ekg and
an echo and they come backcompletely clean, even though
the echo was clean originallybut the ekg wasn't.
And now I have both clean sixmonths later, no problems, and
it's like it never happened yeahand it's like yeah, same thing
(20:41):
with me senior year of college.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
You know it's like and if anything, it's what I
think it is is, and we can evenbring it down a level.
If you don't, some people don'tbelieve that it's like at the
bare minimum, chronic stresslowers your immune system for
other things to come up.
You know what I mean.
We see this a lot too, like ifpeople have hidden viruses in
their body, meaning they're justkind of stagnant, they're not
(21:04):
expressing themselves, but youcome under a lot of chronic
stress boom, they have anopportunity to attack.
You know, stress justaccelerates other things that
you may have been, your body mayhave been able to handle.
It's it's crazy because it'salmost.
It's nice because it's almost.
It's hard because it's not ablood marker, it's not a word on
paper, but it's almost ananswer.
(21:26):
You know, I mean to thesethings that you were just
wondering what the heck happened.
How did that happen?
It went away and I got noanswer.
Will it come back?
You know, I mean and this isalmost.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
I think that's the hard part is that the only way
that you can see thequantifiable evidence of this is
through research you can't seeit on yourself, because you
can't do a split study onyourself what if I?
told myself that this was bad.
What if I told myself it wasgood?
What's the outcome?
You can't, you can't isolateall the variables and so, like
you're saying it's not, you cansee it.
(21:58):
In group studies, you can seethe biomarkers, you can see
quantifiable evidence that itdoes work.
But you can't on yourselfbecause you can't isolate all
the variables and then test a, b, test it.
And what if I tell myself it'sgood?
What if I tell myself it's bad?
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Which is a great reason to not and he actually
hints a lot or doesn't hint,hammers this point home in this
course a lot to not beevidence-bound, as in, don't
take randomized, controlledstudies as the end-all, be-all.
Use them as information and mixthat in with everything else
that you know.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
You know it's just a great point of like there's
there's limitations to so manyof those things and I would say
to somebody who's not a believeror somebody who maybe is a
believer but it's like is thisactually gonna work?
For me is try it for six months.
You know, try it for six monthsand see does.
Does anything change?
Do I feel better?
Do some of my symptoms go away?
Do these things change?
(22:55):
If they do, then it probablyworks for you, and don't
question it beyond that.
I also guarantee it will In theworld we live in, especially
with social media and everybodybeing able to spew just random
information we look for somebodyin the white coat or somebody
(23:15):
with letters after their name.
I mean, it's the whole reasonwhy I got letters after my name
was so that people would be ableto go and say, oh yeah, they
are an expert in their field.
Ok, I can trust what they'resaying, and it's like you don't
need that, though, like in mostscenarios, you don't need that,
though, like in most scenarios,you don't need that.
You don't need a doctor to sithere and tell you to get your
mindset in a positive frame ofmind.
(23:36):
That'll work out for you.
But I think unfortunately,that's kind of the world we live
in, where people wantconfirmation, they want that
reassurance, and that's why theygo to the doctor when they have
a cold, or they bring theirbaby to the ER because you know
it's got a cold, and they gointo the back and they're like
there's not really anything Ican do for you.
There's a baby has a cold, butthey want to hear that from a
(23:59):
doctor that your baby has a cold.
Your baby doesn't have somecrazy disease.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Yeah, you know it goes along with to what you're
saying earlier of we accept thenegative bias way more than the
positive.
In terms of Like when peoplehear.
It's weird to me when peoplehear something like advice,
let's say advice from anon-doctor, which is like hey,
meditate, go for a walk and eatwhole foods, they like they
(24:24):
scrutinize it and they questionlike where's the, where's the
resource, where's theinformation, where's the study?
But like someone's like hey,take this statin for heart
disease.
Like oh, okay, you know.
I mean I feel like the, theeasy, quick, cheap things just
get so much more scrutiny thanthe others, and maybe because
they're fda approved and they'regone through trials and but you
(24:44):
know those yeah, well, I thinkpart of that is just that's
convenience, right, that's?
Speaker 2 (24:50):
yeah, that's convenience.
It's it's easier to take a pilland hope that that's going to
work.
It probably will because of theplacebo, because you believe
that it will, it probably willwork, then it's just one of the
side effects, one of thenegative implications that are
there, just de-amplified becauseyou have a positive frame of
mind there.
But it works both ways, justlike that.
(25:13):
You know, you could be takingsomething as a ton of side
effects and maybe you don't havethe side effects because you
think it's going to work.
But if you thought it didn'twork and you were worried about
side effects, you might have allthe side effects yeah it's like
it's crazy how it works.
Even in a situation like that itcan combat the negative.
But I think the other part isis that, because it's convenient
to just pop a pill, that's somuch easier than training your
(25:37):
brain to frame things in apositive mindset for something
that you have a negative mindsetabout?
Speaker 1 (25:42):
because it's very easy if you have a positive
mindset about medications andyou're big on medications.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
Just take a medication, no matter what the
problem.
You have a positive mindsetabout that.
It's not.
It's not hard to continue downthat pathway, but changing
pathways is much harder.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Right, right, we'll wrap up here.
Let me just give a couple more,since that's what we're going
to do in this episode exactprocesses in the body of how
chronic stress can affect them.
We'll just fly through thesebecause we've gone over a lot of
good stuff, but we talked aboutinsulin resistance, how that
can happen.
That can also lead to adecrease in sex hormone binding
(26:18):
globulin and again we'll diveinto this stuff later.
So if people or you havequestions we can go into it.
But I just want to get to theend points of these.
That decrease allows more freeestrogen in the body, which
increases thyroidhormone-binding globulin that
binds to your thyroid and thatcauses a decrease in thyroid
(26:40):
action, making it harder to burnbody fat.
Meaning the chronic stresscausing insulin resistance
messes with your thyroid.
We see it also messing withthyroid through another pathway
thyroid.
We see it also messing with thethyroid through another pathway
, through 5-deondidase.
It's a tough one, but that's anenzyme.
All that big, complicated wordis an enzyme that converts
(27:01):
inactive thyroid to activethyroid.
So you know, we're seeing a lotof these again, big words, we
can jump into them more later.
But all of this chronic stress,all of these things in the body
is showing up in pathways in thebody that we just aren't
relating to chronic stress.
We're relating it to food,environment.
We need to start looking at allof these stressors, all of your
(27:25):
mental health, all of your pasttraumas, as possible causes for
why we may be unhealthy today.
And it's just crazy becausewe're now getting so much
information.
And the last one to just kindof tie all this in is chronic
stress will mess with yourmethylation.
What that means is, if youcan't methylate
neurotransmitters like serotoninand melatonin, you know they're
(27:48):
going to be messed up.
So it's like stress isliterally causing
neurotransmitter problems inwhich everyone can relate to
because they're hot topic wordsdopamine, serotonin.
You know it's.
It's it's crazy because itworks in the reverse too, like
neurotransmitter problems cancause stress, you know.
So it's it's just crazy.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Yeah, it's wild how it works from both sides, like
it's not, like this is impactingeverybody.
The question is how are youhaving it impact you?
Are you framing it in apositive?
Are you framing it in anegative?
Because if you're not doinganything with it, either you're
naturally a more positive personor you're naturally a more
negative person, and that'swhat's driving this right now.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
And it's an uphill battle.
If you're a negative person,you got to find a lot of ways.
Maybe we'll go into those, butyou got to switch it.
It's tough.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Yeah, it's tough, for sure, For sure.
I've definitely gone throughbouts where I've been on that
side of it and I would say amorning gratitude list is the
way to start digging yourselfout of that hole.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
There's a love hate relationship with it, because
some days you have a bad day andyou're just like what is this
even doing, you know?
But other days, when somethinggoes right, especially something
goes right that you wrote of,like that would make today great
, you think to yourself like youknow what.
I think I noticed it morebecause I've been writing it
down whereas something like thatthat has been, that's the
kicker is.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
It's like that reticular activating system
saying, like you know, I Ithought I'm going to be grateful
for this and this happens to mea lot more than I realized
because I was ungrateful for ituntil I actually put it down.
I was like I actually do careabout this and I should pay
attention a little more to it sothen you're kind of like oh
crap, it got me, I gotta keepdoing it right.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Yeah, the tough, the bad days are tough you know, the
bad days are tough because youwrite down the tough part is
that end of the day one whereyou have yeah, it's like what
did you learn?
Speaker 1 (29:39):
and I'm just like you know.
I learned that today's stump,yeah well, and I usually.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Usually what I do is I learn that I do not have, you
know, the patience for this, orI don't have you know that's a
good one.
That's a lot of times that Iend up putting down is like what
I learned.
I learned that this irritatesthe hell out of me yeah, that's
what I learned.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
But you know, what that end of the day really
helped me was, too, because it'swhat did you learn and
highlights from the day, and alot of times you don't realize
the effect, even if it's so tinygoing to bed on a negative.
When I do that that I have amillion negative things going in
my head.
The day went terrible and itforces you to write two
positives down through the day.
You're falling asleep on thepositive Huge difference.
(30:21):
Thanks for listening to ourpodcast.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
We hope this helps you on your balance freedom
journey.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
Please share your thoughts in the comments section
below.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
Until next time stay balanced.
Welcome to the Balance Blueprints podcast,
where we discuss optimaltechniques for health and
finances and then break it downto create an individualized and
balanced plan.
I'm your host, John Propper,here with my co-host, Justin
Gaines.
In this episode, Justin and Italk about part two of the
psychology of food.
If you haven't listened to partone, we suggest listening,
because in this episode we takea deeper dive into how your mind
(00:22):
affects certain biologicalmechanisms that changes your
biology.
Thanks so much for listeningand we hope you enjoy and that's
a perfect segue into how thesethings kind of work in the body.
So I'll use that, if that'sgood, because we always think of
diabetes or insulin resistanceas a food problem, and we'll go
(00:44):
into some of the pathways hereof just literally how chronic
mental stress can cause it.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Well, it's like if you don't think you have a
problem.
You might not have a problem.
But you have these people whoeat terrible on paper.
They're terrible diets, highsugar.
They should have type 2diabetes.
How do they not have type 2diabetes?
But if they don't see it as aproblem, this is suggesting that
if they don't see it as aproblem, it might not be a
problem for them right, right,right and long term.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
I just I can't fully get behind the idea that the
mind can outpower everythingelse, but I definitely think
it's stronger, but that stuffwill catch up to that and I
still firmly believe that.
But it can make you stayhealthy.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
I think that.
I think that shows you know youcan have somebody who's happy
and mentally healthy, who'soverweight, but there's still a
direct core.
You know, if you look at theoverweight population, we're're
talking high obesity levels.
Their mortality tables, theirlife expectancy, is way less
(01:52):
than somebody who is consideredat the appropriate weight.
And so that's going to takeinto effect your whole range of
spectrum of people who do thinkit's a problem, don't think it's
a problem or indifferent.
So yes it has a long-termimpact, but how much of an
impact?
Speaker 1 (02:09):
yeah.
Well, that's where we'regetting into the conversation of
like everything matters andnothing matters.
So let's find like a middleground, because this all of this
talk made me think about.
This is an unrelated study, butthey did a recent study that
showed I don't want to get itwrong, let me just talk through
it to see when it comes out, ifI remember it, that smokers with
(02:30):
yeah, smokers with high dh, epaand dha, so eating a lot of
omega-3 fatty acids from fish,had a better life expectancy
than non-smokers who had lowlevels of that it's fun, so it's
funny.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
You say that the 10x health guy I'm looking up his
name right now, gary brekka,he's a guy who runs the 10x
health systems he's on.
There's a recording of himsaying that, um, if you're
physically you know, if you'rephysically active and you smoke
and you drink, you'll outlivethe person who's not physically
(03:11):
active.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Yeah, and that gets into the whole.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
it matters and it doesn't matter If you're the
right weight and you just eatright or maybe you don't even
eat, right, you eat moderately.
Well, you're at a good BMI.
You're at a good weight.
You could be outlived bysomebody who smokes and drinks
all the time but goes and has aconsistent workout regimen and
(03:38):
eats the same way you do.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
The only difference is they smoke and drink, but
they also work out way more thanyou do.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Those two things will make it, so they'll live longer
than you will.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
The point of all of this is to play into that.
There's a happy medium andwe're getting into a health
world space where everything'sbeing demonized.
They're making you feel bad forevery little thing and it's
like you want to do the besthabits you can.
Quote, unquote.
(04:07):
Let's come up with a randomnumber 80 percent of the time,
because there's a lot of peoplethat do the best habits they can
and then once a year, when theyeat out or when they eat seed
oils once or so, much stressbecause they think it's killing
them and it's like no, theperson that probably eats three
times the amount of seed seedoils as you, but it is just
happy and comfortable and livingwell may outlive you because
(04:29):
you know you're causing so muchstress but it's crazy because
a lot of us go through it in inthe health world, because I saw
a different account talkingabout this and at first it
aggravated me because I was likeyou know, I don't get it.
Why are we quote, unquotepromoting or saying it's okay to
(04:51):
do these things because theyare unhealthy?
It's like I guess we're notreally saying it's okay to do
these things.
We're saying you're gonna havejust as good a chance, if not
better, of a long, healthy lifeif, when they happen the things
that when they happen, say we'lljust just say smoking, I don't,
alcohol, you know whatever,whatever you want in there, when
(05:12):
they happen, if you don'tstress about them, you're going
to be fine.
Um, so it's tough because thehealth world, especially with
online, we're seeing such a hugeshift of so much demonization,
so much you have to be perfect,so much this and all this is
going against us.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Are you personally happy with your actions?
Are you okay with what you'redoing?
Do you think you're workingtowards the best version of
yourself?
If you do, you probably are,you know, even if you are eating
mcdonald's twice a week andyou're only working out once a
week.
But you, you know that you'redoing the right thing and you
know you're working towards theright place, and you tell
(05:47):
yourself that you have theself-love.
It sounds like that is moreimportant than cutting out, you
know, adding another workout dayor cutting out another cheat
day.
It's more important that youself-love, your, you know, have
the self-love working towardsthe best version of yourself and
are happy and everyone's scaleis different.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
You know that's that's the thing is.
The whole point of thisconversation is there's not one
right way, like I would say.
The only two wrong ways arewanting to be a hundred percent
perfect and beating yourself upwhen you're not, and not caring
at all and doing every unhealthyhabit.
I would say those are the onlytwo wrong ways that I feel
confident saying.
But then everything in betweenis like a where do you want to
(06:28):
fall on that scale?
Why do you want to fall on thatspot and what are your future
goals?
Cause, like you figure thosethings out, it's like, yeah, I
want to be more towards the endof quote, unquote, impossible
perfection, but that's becauseif I'm towards that end, I feel
better day to day and then I canreconcile when I do things that
aren't and the other personmight just be like again, I
(06:49):
don't fully agree with thisbecause they got to ask them to
help fly.
But the YOLO person like youonly live once.
It's like sure, you know ifthat's really what you believe
and makes you happy and you'vecome to terms with that, you
might live a long happy, healthylife that way, I guess.
Maybe, happy, healthy life thatway, I guess, and maybe the
true yolo is, but not caring atall so who knows?
Speaker 2 (07:09):
but you know, there's the those both ends.
Yeah, yeah, um, all right sointeresting, though, that the
focus there is on, you know,being present and asking
yourself do I firmly believethat I'm working towards a
better version of myself and?
And if the answer is yes,you're probably working towards
the best.
You're probably in the besthealth position that you can be
(07:31):
in, because you're going tocontinue to improve, but if
you're beating yourself up, it'snot going to work out well for
you.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Right.
Well, that's my only challengeto people that promote or just
say you should never worry abouteating fast food or this or
that.
You know that's.
My only question to them is whyare you doing that, like?
Ask yourself why?
Because in my mind, self-loveis taking care of yourself and
you know that food's not bad.
(08:00):
But at the same time, theperson that's doing all those
things and has no self-love andbeats themselves up, it's like
you know, we're also not at agood spot.
So, yeah, it's, it's.
It's hard because delicatebalance, such a delicate balance
, but to bring us so what wewere going to talk about so many
fun things, but we transitionedinto how things are actually
(08:21):
happening in the body throughthe processes and and Justin
brought up and we're going totalk about it but how chronic
stress affects so many pathways.
I have a nice diagram here, butwe'll start with a very common
one, but insulin resistance,high blood sugar.
So I'll just read through somethings here.
When you're under chronic stress, a lot of these processes in
(08:43):
the body go up and I'll explainwhat they are.
But if you think about it,ancient times we would see a
tiger.
A lot of stresses we had wereacute, quick stresses so the
body would up, regulate a lot ofthings so we could run, so we
could have energy and and stressI think itself has gotten a
(09:05):
quote unquote bad rep becauseit's not the stress, like that's
actually very good that thoseprocesses happen because they
allowed us to run away and live.
I think it's our perception ofstress and that acute stress
that everyone demonizes Is onlybad when it happens chronically,
which is what's happening today, like we are not very different
than who we were a hundred or athousand years ago as humans,
(09:30):
but our environment iscompletely different.
So you know, we are notprogrammed for this low level
chronic stress that we're seeingfrom social media jobs,
mortgages, all this stuff andit's causing that acute response
to become chronic and that'swhen we're seeing a lot of
problems.
(09:50):
That's kind of the intro thereand that leads into it, because
one of the things that happensis when we go into a sympathetic
state so a more fight, stay orflight our blood sugar goes up
and it gets broken down becauseit wants to shove sugar into the
cells so they have energy torun.
This causes the need forinsulin to rise, because when
(10:14):
you have sugar in the blood itcan't just go into cells.
Insulin needs to transport itinto the cells.
And then if there's chronichigh blood sugar, because you're
chronically stressed, your bodycontinually makes things it
needs the sugar, because it'sagain think it needs to run away
constantly eventually thesecells kind of turn off to the
(10:36):
sugar because they're like we'renot even utilizing it.
You constantly make it and youkeep shoveling it into the cells
, but it's not a physical stress, it's a mental.
But it's not a physical stress,it's a mental stress.
So it's not being utilized.
It causes a problem.
Yeah, so just so I was wrappingit up, but I have it here is um
(10:59):
.
So chronic stress can causeinsulin, insulin resistance,
because the body continuallythinks it's in fight or flight.
So it continually thinks itneeds to run or fight and cells
can only handle so much sugarbefore they actually shut down.
And they shut down causinginsulin resistance because the
mitochondria in those cells needa break.
So it's the same exact processas if your body is eating too
(11:22):
much sugar and doesn't know whatto do with it.
Again, I think this is the wholething of people demonize carbs.
It's like I don't think carbsare that bad if we're utilizing
them, if we are in an insulinsensitive state, meaning we're
fit, we're active, like our bodycan use those.
It's not the carb, it's ourbody.
But the same exact pathway ishappening in the mind even
(11:44):
though you're not ingesting aton of carbs, the mind's finding
places in the body, or thebody's finding sugar stores, and
breaking them down and puttingthem into your blood system so
your cells can use them,thinking you're having acute
physical stresses, but you'rejust under chronic mental stress
.
So I'm out of breath.
(12:04):
But that's wild.
I'm out of breath but that'swild.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
No, it is interesting because, yeah, when you bring
in the fight or flight responseand you bring in, you know that
caveman mind, you know thelimbic brain sitting there and
creating that's what's causingsome of these diabetic issues
and high insulin issues as aresult of your body needing to
get away and you just not beingable to because you're not
moving your body to get rid ofit, because it's a mental stress
.
It's not something you actuallyneed to run away from, right,
it's not something you actuallyneed to run away from.
It's typically something youneed to deal with on a mental
level or just get done at workor whatever the case may be
there's something on yourchecklist.
That you haven't done becauseyou've been putting it off and
that's causing you to bestressed out about it.
There's no ability to actuallygo run away from it and burn up
(13:07):
that sugar.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
That's very interesting how that plays a
role into this piece of thepuzzle and I can't imagine that
it's more prevalent or importantthan overeating tons of high
sugary food that we see in theworld.
But it explains those weirdcases of maybe more fit or thin
individuals that have insulinresistance and you're just
thinking how or why.
But you know their lifestyle is, has extreme amounts of mental
(13:34):
stress and that's never lookedat.
You know it explains thosestranger cases right, right.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Well, I think it also explains why 10 000 steps or
just going for a walk is sopivotal.
Because if you're under, youknow if you're in a office
environment or you know anenvironment where you're not up
and moving around.
So we're talking, you knowwhite collar jobs, not the blue
collar jobs where you're under alot of that mental, physical
stress mental stress, notphysical stress but you're
(14:01):
sitting at a desk so you don'thave the opportunity to get away
from it going for that walkallows you to burn through some
of that sugar and some of those,you know, use up some of that
insulin that you've produced inorder for you to then regulate
back down because you'veconsumed it via the, via the
exercise that you've done.
That's why the walking pads at adesk, I think, have played such
(14:22):
a large role, just by you know.
This is all just coming to meright now from what you're
saying.
With these research, it justmakes sense that our body's put
into basically a call forphysical response, but our body
doesn't realize that it's amental response.
So we need to introduce thephysical response in order to
balance out what our body'sproducing and telling us to do,
(14:45):
but we don't actually takeaction on.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
And that's.
That's another reason, too, whyI think people don't believe
half of this stuff of like.
When you say, oh, go for a walkat your lunch break, like how
much could that help.
But when you're thinking aboutit you're like it could help in
terms of exercise, it could helpin terms of a mental break, it
can help in terms of gettingnatural light.
These simplest things have sucha big impact but they're so
(15:10):
hard to believe that they have.
But there's so many factorsplaying in there.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Like you said, if you're in an office all day
under artificial blue light,constant mental stress, not
moving, it's like, yeah, a walkdoes wonders, it's interesting
too, because this whole podcastis about how this whole podcast
is about how you know, thiswhole podcast being this episode
part one, part two, however, itbreaks down, but these episodes
being about very little thingsthat make a very large
(15:39):
difference.
They're almost magnifiers.
You know, going for the walkbecause of the mental stress
capacity, visual visualizingthings, having the right mental
mindset magnifies theconsequences of these actions.
You know, if you're not eatingwell but you have the mindset
that it's okay, it decreases theimpact.
(16:00):
If you have the mindset thatit's not okay and you're not
eating well, that's going tohave a worse impact.
So it almost seems like mindsetis an amplifier of whatever you
are doing.
So if you're doing somethingthat's negative but you have a
positive mindset, those start tocancel each other out a little
bit.
But if they're the same anegative and a negative, or a
(16:20):
positive and a positive thoseare going to multiply.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Right.
I think in terms of diet, it'slike a person who's you know, if
you're at terms and okay witheverything's not organic and
these eggs are just cage free,you know.
It's like those are the thingswhere, if you're okay with that,
it's actually going to bebetter for you.
Like you need to come to termswith.
You're doing the best you canat the moment.
(16:44):
We don't need to stress outversus the other one and guess
what?
We'll play into the financialside here.
All of these things are free.
You know they want to tell youhow expensive health is.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
It's like master, these things, yeah you know,
yeah, go for a walk and do somemeditation, or, you know,
visualize things.
That doesn't cost you a pennyfree.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
So, um, the other thing that I brought up earlier
too, just a pathway here is,here is so we'll go like I was
saying, a lot of the processesin the body get upregulated
Lipolysis, glucose gettingconverted to pyruvate, lipolysis
, triglycerides in the fattyacids, just a bunch of things
here that I'm just kind ofglossing over.
But lipolysis, an important one, triglycerides in the body
(17:35):
people may know that one becauseit's on, I think, a cholesterol
test usually when you go intothe doctor but triglycerides get
converted into fatty acids intothe body.
That happens, that increaseswhen there's chronic stress and
that increase can lead to or bea cause of non-alcoholic fatty
liver disease.
That's something we've seenwhen people eat too much sugar.
But it's crazy because we'reseeing this in people that may
(18:00):
just have way too much chronicstress.
And it was funny because acouple weeks ago I got a message
from someone that their doctorsaid they had non-alcoholic
fatty liver disease.
And we just thought that'sweird.
They're in good shape, they'renot overweight, must have been a
mistake.
And then I take this course andI'm just seeing that and I'm
(18:21):
like wild Because I know someother factors around it.
It's like that could be a bigreason.
It's just the mental, thestress in your life has just
such a huge impact and, I think,can explain so many things for
the people that think, oh, I'mhealthy, why me?
Or I'm doing everything right,or why me or you know it's?
(18:43):
It doesn't make sense, it'slike it does.
You just gotta look a little,look a little deeper.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
I think even my the heart condition issue that I had
, like we never.
I never got any real answers onthat, but I still think about
it and I was definitely at thehighest stress load I was ever
at in my life at that time pointand so I think there was
definitely a mental stress loadcomponent to it.
And this is where I think youknow there's multiple factors at
(19:09):
play here, right Plus learningnow that caffeine consumption
pulls magnesium out of your body.
Magnesium plays a large role inheart health.
So at my caffeine levels,because of my stress load and
the hours I was working, I washigh caffeine levels, depleting
my magnesium, not taking amagnesium supplement.
Coupled with the stress and nothaving like a positive frame
(19:32):
set around that, it was like I'mat, I'm at my highest stress
point and it is not good and I'maware of that.
Those things again amplified anda seemingly healthy, fit,
physically active, good diettotally 20s yeah ends up in the
hospital with what was perceivedas a heart attack, gets a whole
bunch of stuff and actually hasa heart issue and now it's
(19:57):
resolved and then six monthslater, oh, you don't have a
heart issue anymore, it'scompletely resolved.
And it's weird, you know.
But what?
yeah, and that throws youthrough a loop in itself but now
that we we're talking aboutthis, what changed in that six
period?
Six month period I was workingwith doctors.
I was in the mindset of like,what am I do, what can I do to
get out of this, what can I doto heal myself?
And so you're positivelyframing everything, getting out
(20:19):
of that stress, managing thestress, being in a positive
mindset, and then boom, sixmonths later you get an ekg and
an echo and they come backcompletely clean, even though
the echo was clean originallybut the ekg wasn't.
And now I have both clean sixmonths later, no problems, and
it's like it never happened yeahand it's like yeah, same thing
(20:41):
with me senior year of college.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
You know it's like and if anything, it's what I
think it is is, and we can evenbring it down a level.
If you don't, some people don'tbelieve that it's like at the
bare minimum, chronic stresslowers your immune system for
other things to come up.
You know what I mean.
We see this a lot too, like ifpeople have hidden viruses in
their body, meaning they're justkind of stagnant, they're not
(21:04):
expressing themselves, but youcome under a lot of chronic
stress boom, they have anopportunity to attack.
You know, stress justaccelerates other things that
you may have been, your body mayhave been able to handle.
It's it's crazy because it'salmost.
It's nice because it's almost.
It's hard because it's not ablood marker, it's not a word on
paper, but it's almost ananswer.
(21:26):
You know, I mean to thesethings that you were just
wondering what the heck happened.
How did that happen?
It went away and I got noanswer.
Will it come back?
You know, I mean and this isalmost.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
I think that's the hard part is that the only way
that you can see thequantifiable evidence of this is
through research you can't seeit on yourself, because you
can't do a split study onyourself what if I?
told myself that this was bad.
What if I told myself it wasgood?
What's the outcome?
You can't, you can't isolateall the variables and so, like
you're saying it's not, you cansee it.
(21:58):
In group studies, you can seethe biomarkers, you can see
quantifiable evidence that itdoes work.
But you can't on yourselfbecause you can't isolate all
the variables and then test a, b, test it.
And what if I tell myself it'sgood?
What if I tell myself it's bad?
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Which is a great reason to not and he actually
hints a lot or doesn't hint,hammers this point home in this
course a lot to not beevidence-bound, as in, don't
take randomized, controlledstudies as the end-all, be-all.
Use them as information and mixthat in with everything else
that you know.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
You know it's just a great point of like there's
there's limitations to so manyof those things and I would say
to somebody who's not a believeror somebody who maybe is a
believer but it's like is thisactually gonna work?
For me is try it for six months.
You know, try it for six monthsand see does.
Does anything change?
Do I feel better?
Do some of my symptoms go away?
Do these things change?
(22:55):
If they do, then it probablyworks for you, and don't
question it beyond that.
I also guarantee it will In theworld we live in, especially
with social media and everybodybeing able to spew just random
information we look for somebodyin the white coat or somebody
(23:15):
with letters after their name.
I mean, it's the whole reasonwhy I got letters after my name
was so that people would be ableto go and say, oh yeah, they
are an expert in their field.
Ok, I can trust what they'resaying, and it's like you don't
need that, though, like in mostscenarios, you don't need that,
though, like in most scenarios,you don't need that.
You don't need a doctor to sithere and tell you to get your
mindset in a positive frame ofmind.
(23:36):
That'll work out for you.
But I think unfortunately,that's kind of the world we live
in, where people wantconfirmation, they want that
reassurance, and that's why theygo to the doctor when they have
a cold, or they bring theirbaby to the ER because you know
it's got a cold, and they gointo the back and they're like
there's not really anything Ican do for you.
There's a baby has a cold, butthey want to hear that from a
(23:59):
doctor that your baby has a cold.
Your baby doesn't have somecrazy disease.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Yeah, you know it goes along with to what you're
saying earlier of we accept thenegative bias way more than the
positive.
In terms of Like when peoplehear.
It's weird to me when peoplehear something like advice,
let's say advice from anon-doctor, which is like hey,
meditate, go for a walk and eatwhole foods, they like they
(24:24):
scrutinize it and they questionlike where's the, where's the
resource, where's theinformation, where's the study?
But like someone's like hey,take this statin for heart
disease.
Like oh, okay, you know.
I mean I feel like the, theeasy, quick, cheap things just
get so much more scrutiny thanthe others, and maybe because
they're fda approved and they'regone through trials and but you
(24:44):
know those yeah, well, I thinkpart of that is just that's
convenience, right, that's?
Speaker 2 (24:50):
yeah, that's convenience.
It's it's easier to take a pilland hope that that's going to
work.
It probably will because of theplacebo, because you believe
that it will, it probably willwork, then it's just one of the
side effects, one of thenegative implications that are
there, just de-amplified becauseyou have a positive frame of
mind there.
But it works both ways, justlike that.
(25:13):
You know, you could be takingsomething as a ton of side
effects and maybe you don't havethe side effects because you
think it's going to work.
But if you thought it didn'twork and you were worried about
side effects, you might have allthe side effects yeah it's like
it's crazy how it works.
Even in a situation like that itcan combat the negative.
But I think the other part isis that, because it's convenient
to just pop a pill, that's somuch easier than training your
(25:37):
brain to frame things in apositive mindset for something
that you have a negative mindsetabout?
Speaker 1 (25:42):
because it's very easy if you have a positive
mindset about medications andyou're big on medications.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
Just take a medication, no matter what the
problem.
You have a positive mindsetabout that.
It's not.
It's not hard to continue downthat pathway, but changing
pathways is much harder.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Right, right, we'll wrap up here.
Let me just give a couple more,since that's what we're going
to do in this episode exactprocesses in the body of how
chronic stress can affect them.
We'll just fly through thesebecause we've gone over a lot of
good stuff, but we talked aboutinsulin resistance, how that
can happen.
That can also lead to adecrease in sex hormone binding
(26:18):
globulin and again we'll diveinto this stuff later.
So if people or you havequestions we can go into it.
But I just want to get to theend points of these.
That decrease allows more freeestrogen in the body, which
increases thyroidhormone-binding globulin that
binds to your thyroid and thatcauses a decrease in thyroid
(26:40):
action, making it harder to burnbody fat.
Meaning the chronic stresscausing insulin resistance
messes with your thyroid.
We see it also messing withthyroid through another pathway
thyroid.
We see it also messing with thethyroid through another pathway
, through 5-deondidase.
It's a tough one, but that's anenzyme.
All that big, complicated wordis an enzyme that converts
(27:01):
inactive thyroid to activethyroid.
So you know, we're seeing a lotof these again, big words, we
can jump into them more later.
But all of this chronic stress,all of these things in the body
is showing up in pathways in thebody that we just aren't
relating to chronic stress.
We're relating it to food,environment.
We need to start looking at allof these stressors, all of your
(27:25):
mental health, all of your pasttraumas, as possible causes for
why we may be unhealthy today.
And it's just crazy becausewe're now getting so much
information.
And the last one to just kindof tie all this in is chronic
stress will mess with yourmethylation.
What that means is, if youcan't methylate
neurotransmitters like serotoninand melatonin, you know they're
(27:48):
going to be messed up.
So it's like stress isliterally causing
neurotransmitter problems inwhich everyone can relate to
because they're hot topic wordsdopamine, serotonin.
You know it's.
It's it's crazy because itworks in the reverse too, like
neurotransmitter problems cancause stress, you know.
So it's it's just crazy.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Yeah, it's wild how it works from both sides, like
it's not, like this is impactingeverybody.
The question is how are youhaving it impact you?
Are you framing it in apositive?
Are you framing it in anegative?
Because if you're not doinganything with it, either you're
naturally a more positive personor you're naturally a more
negative person, and that'swhat's driving this right now.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
And it's an uphill battle.
If you're a negative person,you got to find a lot of ways.
Maybe we'll go into those, butyou got to switch it.
It's tough.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Yeah, it's tough, for sure, For sure.
I've definitely gone throughbouts where I've been on that
side of it and I would say amorning gratitude list is the
way to start digging yourselfout of that hole.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
There's a love hate relationship with it, because
some days you have a bad day andyou're just like what is this
even doing, you know?
But other days, when somethinggoes right, especially something
goes right that you wrote of,like that would make today great
, you think to yourself like youknow what.
I think I noticed it morebecause I've been writing it
down whereas something like thatthat has been, that's the
kicker is.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
It's like that reticular activating system
saying, like you know, I Ithought I'm going to be grateful
for this and this happens to mea lot more than I realized
because I was ungrateful for ituntil I actually put it down.
I was like I actually do careabout this and I should pay
attention a little more to it sothen you're kind of like oh
crap, it got me, I gotta keepdoing it right.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Yeah, the tough, the bad days are tough you know, the
bad days are tough because youwrite down the tough part is
that end of the day one whereyou have yeah, it's like what
did you learn?
Speaker 1 (29:39):
and I'm just like you know.
I learned that today's stump,yeah well, and I usually.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Usually what I do is I learn that I do not have, you
know, the patience for this, orI don't have you know that's a
good one.
That's a lot of times that Iend up putting down is like what
I learned.
I learned that this irritatesthe hell out of me yeah, that's
what I learned.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
But you know, what that end of the day really
helped me was, too, because it'swhat did you learn and
highlights from the day, and alot of times you don't realize
the effect, even if it's so tinygoing to bed on a negative.
When I do that that I have amillion negative things going in
my head.
The day went terrible and itforces you to write two
positives down through the day.
You're falling asleep on thepositive Huge difference.
(30:21):
Thanks for listening to ourpodcast.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
We hope this helps you on your balance freedom
journey.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
Please share your thoughts in the comments section
below.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
Until next time stay balanced.
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