Discover your axis: your ally of your voice and sanity

The HPA axis of your body is your quiet axis for your mental well-being. Learn how you can make your axis your powerful ally in your pursuit of voice and sanity. Access my complimentary handout that guides you to strengthen your ally- easy and yet powerful. You got this!

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Tools for Vitality: Therapy, Coaching, Optimizing Nutrition and Movement for Mental Wellness

Transcript

Sibylle Georgianna: 0:11

Hey there, this is the legend again. And today I want to share with you about this very interesting and very exciting piece of information so that you have your mental health and your voice in sanity at your fingertips or within your body. So let's look at this sounds maybe a little bit of technical explanation first, but I really want you to have this information, because it gives you that empowerment and I really desire as your personal biggest fan, to receive. So it starts out a little technical here, because I want to give you a definition we call a part of our body's feedback mechanism between various organs that regulate how we feel and how we, you know how even our immune response and our fertility is the HPA axis. So it's a feedback mechanism between the hypothalamus, which is a part of your limbic system that governs all of your F responses, food intake, fight or flight, freeze, sexuality, your pituitary gland, which sits part in part of this picture as well, and your adrenal glands. So the pituitary gland serves your glands in order to produce. Oh, it's the hype of faeces. It's a little clamp that governs a lot of ways of how hormones are circulated in our system, and how we can get our best. And as we look at this HPA access, I want to share about that with you. Because if we can attend and stabilize our how our HPA Axis operates, we can really curb our stress, and really allow us to be in the best place we can be with our body. So let's look at this real quick. And it sounds maybe a little bit technical. The idea is that when you're stressed, our feedback mechanism between the, you know age, the P and the A, and this axis gets kind of like off off the hawk. And it can get a severe stress symptoms and even chronic illnesses, and difficulties, for example, to conceive, difficulties to sleep. And there's like all kinds of health issues associated with a dysregulated HPA axis. However, we hear in psychology and my collaboration with the mental and medical professionals, there are ways that you stress can be done shifted through very simple techniques. We call that stress system, restorative therapy. And so what we would do together with other professionals who are on your support team are that we look at ways for you to decrease your stressors, and help you find ways to stabilize your HPA axis system. So, in this stresses, Thorpeness system or sort of therapy, we look at ways to help you with like their status changes, stress reduction, nutritional support, which again, I can't give because I'm not a nutritionist, however, I can support you with all the psychological insight in this area, psychotherapy and other ways to and support you, you know at your best. And so even though I want to give a little bit of a bird's eye view on how with simple attendance to what we eat, we can already help with a restorative function of your body. And with the way how with food, we can decrease your stress response and calm down that HPA axis. So I was surprised to hear that as we change our way of watching our diet. That's the easiest and also the most often occurring stressor to our HPA axis, I thought it would be like how I'm dealing with my time management. But it is really like the food we eat influences our HPA axis. And that gives us all our symptoms from you know, all the features around not being able to sleep not being able to get enough rest, more being successful, susceptible with our immune function. And the easiest way to calm down the HPA axis is that we can stabilize by stabilizing our our food intake to help for example, with your glycemic point, your blood sugar index, making sure that we have a balanced level of macro macronutrients. So things that really help us to help our body produce all the things that it needs to produce. And by eating anti inflammatory foods, as well as limiting foods that are potentially inflammatory. So let's slow this all down. Again, I'm just sharing with you because I really want you to have that piece of information. And I want you to know how with that way of thinking and managing your food, you manage your mood, you manage your immune function, you manage your fertility. And of course, you manage them with in, you know, the support of all those health care providers who are the experts. I'm just showing a bird's eye view here. So let's start with the glycaemic dysregulation or making your blood sugar your glycemic index be at its best. So I wasn't that clear before. It's my nutrition psychology classes that blood sugar levels significantly influence how we are and our whole body produces and uses proteins, fat and carbohydrates that we consume, in as we, you know, as as we eat our food. And if we eat a lot of carbs, that really destabilizes our HPA axis. So when we look at carbs, we have to look at those with lower glycemic index, which are more beneficial to mental functioning than high glycemic index foods. So low glycemic carbs are veggies, most food, grains, legumes, new nuts and seeds and high glycemic carbs, other stuff, that's really the one that we love to eat, and that we really call our carbs most of the time, potatoes, just at least in Germany, it's very popular where I'm from refined grains, sugars. So as we are dealing as we are looking at our blood sugar levels, study fat studies have shown that the blood sugar level influences my proportion of protein, fat and carbohydrates. And the idea is that if we are using more complex carbohydrates with lower glycemic index, then that helps us to get more stabilization in the blood sugar. And then if we have that happening, that helps our HPA Axis become more regulated. And that then helps our cortisol secretion, our stress responses, our stress hormones that are being secreted as needed to be also more regulated. So this sounds super tactical, and I apologize for that. But I really want you to know that there is a way to get more stabilized with your HPA axis. And I would love to support you with that. So one way is to look for those low glycemic index, high or nutrient dense carb complex carbohydrates. Then within this field, they have also found a way that you can if you look it up and make macronutrient mood therapy, you can, by the way, how you look for your maker, macronutrients the stuff that's like a really nutritious stuff. For example, Whole Foods, source protein, complex carbohydrates, healthy fats. So if you have that as part of your diet, four to six ounces of that protein, two cups of vegetables have a couple of other complex carbs, this may actually then also include a healthy fat in each meal, three balanced meals a day, you know, like the typical what we call clean eating, healthy eating, that then helps us to, to also come down your mood, think about that, you'll feel less depressed and less anxious by eating more balanced. So if I feel that sounds like too good to be true, we only have to figure out how to you know, watch for our food to be in that more healthy category I just as I just said, and that includes to look for ways how we have less and like less inflammatory foods as part of our diet. So first of all, I wasn't even quite aware of how without foods, we can help our body fight inflammation or we can help our body be more inflamed so inflammatory foods that are not good for our body that cause an inflammation response potentially in our body is unfortunately refined sugars all that we love refined grains, the white bread and overheated vegetables or is an trans saturated fat so hydrogenated oils that were produced the you know, that were changed in its original consistency and therefore contains these trans fats that are unfortunately not as healthy. So all the fun foods as I call them, those typical original fun foods that we like to eat the sugars, the trans fat foods or overheated foods, vegetables, always fried foods that can potentially cause an anti inflammatory response in your body. Now, the good news is that you can offset an inflammatory response in your body which taxes your immune system which makes you feel, you know, again, not be at your best that influences your mental wellness, by one limiting those inflammatory foods but also by consuming what we call anti inflammatory foods that are unprocessed, and that are, you know, in this category of leafy green vegetables that are pastured poultry eggs that are Omega three rich foods with fish that are needs that are produced by grass fed animals, raw nuts, olive, avocado, coconut, hemp, and flaxseed. So, so those are all things that can really offset and help upon mood help with our inflammatory response. And help with that HPA axis to be at its best. So in, in, you know, as we put the bookmark here, these are just not so many things to really watch for, but they can do a huge thing for your mental well being. So if we're looking at very mood, and basically inflammatory oriented diet that help with the mood that help with anti inflammation in the body, all that is, is we got to look for a little bit of a more balanced intake of protein, healthy fats, and complex, low glycemic in their carbohydrates. It's as easy as a foreign avoiding the typical stuff that we may already know is not so good fosse that refined grains, corn, sugar, wheat. And that, we can just then with simple habits, such as eating as many anti inflammatory foods as possible, eating right away from the beginning of the day on so our low blood sugar does not drop, eating a small snack even before we go to bat. And then keeping also these inflammatory drinks and caffeine, unfortunately, at an amendment minimum, that really can go a long way. So I just want you to be inspired, I don't want you to feel oh my goodness, I do none of that. I just want us to be on this together. Look for those things that give us those new trick nutrients. Look for those things that we have in our control that we can then with that boost our immune function, boost our mental health, we lose the ability to speak, a boost our ability to be the best that we can in this complex world. And we would just stay on this together. Because my passion is for you to have at your fingertips in your capacity, the things that you have control over that you can then use to be your best support and thereby then make the biggest imprint and the best be the best influence in this world. So I want to really inspire us together here. And I can't wait to share more and to talk to you again next time. Bye for now.