ATHE_Transcript_Ep 476_YT 36
JJ Virgin: [00:00:00] Hey, this is JJ Virgin. Thanks so much for joining me. This is ask the health expert. In each episode, I put the power of health in your hands and share ways to get healthy, lose weight, heal your gut detox and lots more. So you can look and feel better fast if you’d rather watch the video. Hey, I did put on my makeup and do my hair.
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Isn’t it great when you’re stressed and someone tells you to calm down and you just instantly calm down because that happens never, we’re all under stress, more stress than ever, but there are ways you can decrease the impact of stress and anxiety on your body by reducing the stress your body is feeling.
And. By [00:01:00] making your system more resilient when it does get hit with it, because we will get hit with it. And guess what? It starts with food. Let’s talk about how, Hey, it’s JJ. Thanks for joining me. And thanks for your interest in getting healthier. I love that this is part of a series about how to use food to heal and feel better, fast by improving what’s at the end of your fork.
And in this episode, we’re gonna talk about what to eat when to eat and. For stress and anxiety. Now it’s hard to find someone who isn’t stressed these days. I mean, give it a second. Think about it. Can you think of anyone? Me neither. I mean, stress and anxiety are at epidemic levels. Now listen to these stats, but don’t let them stress you out.
Help is at the end of your fork. So according to the American Institute of stress, about 33% of people say they feel extreme stress. [00:02:00] 77% of people experience stress that affects their physical health and 48% of people have trouble sleeping because of. And the global organization for stress reports that 75% of Americans experienced moderate to high stress levels.
In the past month, 80% of people feel stress at work and stress is the number one health concern of high school students. And honestly that one’s, to me, the most upsetting. So stress can affect how you feel, how you think and how you behave. And there doesn’t even have to be an obvious cause of. With everything that’s going on right now, we’re all feeling.
And when you can’t shake it, it’s really bad for you. Stress can cause you to gain weight. It can aid you, it lowers your immune system. It raises your blood sugar. And that of course can bring on inflammation and insulin resistance. It makes your gut leaky, which of course then leads to food intolerance and it reeks havoc on your hormones, starting with your thyroid.
I mean, [00:03:00] that is a huge wrecking ball. The risks are simply too big here for your health to try to ignore. Now I’m talking chronic stress. I’m not talking about a good stress, like physical stress that comes from a workout. The kind of stress that makes your body stronger. Chronic stress is what breaks it down.
Chronic stress triggers. You built in survival mode where your body thinks either you’re about to become part of the food chain or you’re gonna die of starvation and cause of that, your body cranks up the stress hormones, especially cortisol. And when that happens, You can’t sleep well, then you’re irritable and you’re impatient and that makes you hungrier and I always say you’re hung, but it’s not for salmon and brussel sprouts.
Right. And I’ll tell you if stress has its hooks in you, there’s relief. I’m gonna help you with some strategies that help you and your body handle it better. And we’re gonna start with food. [00:04:00] What you eat can be powerful medicine and what you don’t eat. Can be just as important. So nutritional tweaks can help you connect the dots to see the impact food is having on your stress and anxiety levels.
First, it’s all about supporting your brain. Your brain runs everything from your health to your happiness. You know, I talked with an expert on that, my good friend, the world renowned psychiatrist, Dr. Daniel Aman. And he believes that if we ate better, we would have an immediate decrease of 30% of the mental health challenges around the.
that is huge. He says, if you can get your food, right, you think better, you’re happier. You hurt less. And you’re less angry because your brain is about 2% of your body’s weight, but it uses 20 to 30% of the calories that you consume. So in a large part, your brain is what you eat. Right. And if you eat crap, you begin to think like crap, you [00:05:00] begin to feel like crap.
And you begin to act like crap. And that is a direct quote from Dr. Daniel Aman. So to fully support your brain and the messages it sends to your body, you need to stabilize your blood sugar. You need to lower inflammation, and you gotta reduce the surge of cortisol, your body releases in response to stress.
And the number one way to do this is to eat by the plate. Now I have covered eating by the plate in my other videos, but basically what you need to know here is that when you eat by the plate, you are making sure that you are starting with protein first. Because protein’s so key for good satiety and blood sugar balance, then you’re adding in your non-starchy vegetables.
Then you’re adding in your healthy fat, and then you’ll get a little bit of fiber from slow, low carbs. What’s the result. You’ve got protein, fat and fiber that trifecta for blood sugar balance for satiety and for a healthy metabolism. Now you can start with your first meal [00:06:00] when you break your fast. It’s so key critical to start this way with that trifecta of protein, fat, and fiber, because that good breakfast with this is gonna help you with that blood sugar stability for the whole day.
In fact, there’s this thing called the second meal phenomenon that says what you ate on your first meal is gonna impact how your body responds to your second meal. So if you eat your first meal and all of a sudden you’re hungry right away. Now all of a sudden you’re wanting some more carbs. Mm that’s.
Because you didn’t nail it with the protein, fat and fiber on that first meal, and it’s making you hungrier and it’s making your blood sugar go crazy. And it’s making you hold on to store fat. So start the day. Break your fast, right. Again, protein, fat and fiber trifecta. So one of the fun twists, my friend Trudy Scott, who’s a nutritionist and an author and a food mood expert recommends is having dinner for breakfast.
And I want you to think about this. Think about like the weird breakfast [00:07:00] foods that we have here. They’re really dessert that muffin and a latte that cereal with milk. Right that toast with jam so much of what we have is just a gluten sugar dairy hit that activates all of your opiate receptors in your brain.
So think instead of this dinner for breakfast, so super stew or leftover dinner. Now, if you’re a little more traditional, you can break your fast with my go-to loaded smoothie. And again, what I love to do is a loaded smoothie and I’ll put in my reignite wellness all in one protein powder. I’ll add in some nut milk unsweetened.
I’ll add in a little bit of avocado or freshly ground flaxseed meal and maybe put in a little bit of berries or a little bit of slightly green, frozen half of a banana, but again, protein, fat, and fiber. Now you gotta make sure you’re getting clean protein at every meal. This is so key critical because that is gonna help stabilize your blood sugar and your insulin.
If you’ve got blood sugar swings going on all over the. [00:08:00] It is just gonna feed into this anxiety. It’s gonna make you more irritable and you’re gonna have a lot of trouble with focus, right, man, it can even make you depressed. So vegetables can have some protein, broccoli and spinach they’ll have some, but remember they’re really carbohydrates.
Proteins just a little bit. So you’re gonna, if you are a vegan or vegetarian, you gotta be more vigilant about really getting in that protein. Now, if you eat animal protein, it’s interesting. Red meats often made out to be the bad guy, right. But truly shared a study with me and like blew my mind. It was done in 2010 by Felice
Jacka.
And it showed that the strongest connection to good mental health was someone’s grass fed meat. Crazy right now, important to note here that was clean meat. That was grass fed meat. You want all your protein to be clean. Remember you are what you eat, ate [00:09:00] and grass fed grass finished meat is very different than what I call junk food meat.
right. Like baloney or salami, or a burger at a fast food place. Junk feed meat, us from animals, eating GMO, corn and grain. And. And it totally changes what you’re eating. Now. They have a bad fatty acid profile. They’re very pro-inflammatory. And you know, again, if they’re getting pesticides and hormones and everything else it’s storing in that fat. Remember, you are what you eat ate.
You are eating everything they ate and sadly, their living conditions can be horrible. They can be stressed and there’s something called xenohormesis that says they’re. Their stress hormones are now in the meat. So their stress becomes your stress. So grass fed and finish meat has these healthy amino acids, which are the building blocks of neurotransmitters.
And it also has zinc, which also helps make neurotransmitters and neurotransmitters regulate your moods. So [00:10:00] that can have a huge impact on your stress. Right. Also grass fed and finish meat has higher level omega-3’s. And these are hugely beneficial for mental health and inflammation. So it’s a big, big, big difference.
So again, I hope I’ve hit home for you that the quality of meat is everything it’s either grass fed or, and finished, or think of it like junk food. Now also you can think about including pasture raised poultry. And cold water, wild fish, like salmon and smaller fish like sardines, because they are less likely to accumulate some of the heavy metals and toxins.
And what you’ll get from these wild seafood, wild fish is some healthy fats. Omega-3 rich fats, which are great for lowering inflammation, which again, connects to brain health. Now there’s a lot of research showing that the countries that have the highest consumption of fish. Have lower mental health issues.
And in fact, if you think about like the happiest countries in the world, Norway, Finland Iceland and is Sweden, one of ’em anyway, it’s all of those ones over there that eat a [00:11:00] lot of fish. And you would think because they’re in areas that are dark a lot of the time, this wouldn’t be the case. So the fish is doing something.
Now, if you’re getting some animal protein that will also check the box on another need for matching stress. And that is eating foods high in B vitamins. If you’re not getting animal protein, then you can get some bees from leafy greens and some legumes, but you won’t get B12. That’s only found in animal food sources.
So you’ll definitely need to supplement with it. Or you’re at risk for deficiency. And you need B12 for maintaining healthy red blood cells and nerves and normal brain function. So do not put yourself at risk for that again, vegan and vegetarian. Make sure you’re getting your B12. Supplementally all right. Let’s talk, fruits and veggies.
So, of course they’re a good thing for you, but you have to choose wisely. Fruit is not a free food. You don’t wanna overdo the fruit because too much sugar. Fruit is sugar. Now granted it comes with fiber and phytonutrients, but too much sugar can actually spike your blood [00:12:00] sugar and increase your stress and carbs can fall into that category too.
But what Dr. Daniel Aman likes to say is there are smart carbs and there are dumb. and that really is important because that then doesn’t demonize all carbs, right? Like example broccoli and non-starchy vegetables are smart carbs, right? They’re obviously a good choice, but process cards that are high glycemic, low fiber, you know, white bread, white pasta, those would be dumb carbs.
Yeah. I’m right there with you, Dr. Daniel Aman. Now I mentioned eating by the plate, eating by the plate. Also lowers inflammation. Our Western junk food diet is associated with a high instance of depression and anxiety. So getting back to real whole foods is super important. If you’re sensitive to any of my seven highly inflammatory foods, I call them my high five foods for high food intolerance, particularly gluten or dairy.
They could be at the root of your anxiety and [00:13:00] depression. So, if you want more on how to test for possible food sensitivities, be sure to check out my book, the Virgin diet, and it has a three week easy program to help you figure out which foods work for you and which foods don’t by having you do some simple swaps.
You swap the hurting foods for healing foods, so that you boom, feel better fast. Okay, you gotta support your gut, your microbiome, the health of your microbiome is key to stabilize your mood because 95% of your body’s serotonin is produced in your gut. It’s called your second brain for a reason. Now you have 100 toum bugs in your gut.
That is 10 times the number of bugs in your gut, as cells in your body, your microbiome protects your intestinal lining. It helps you make neurotransmitters. It helps you make hormones. It digests your foods. It helps you absorb nutrients and it detoxifies your body. So focus on focusing on eating organic gut supporting [00:14:00] foods, foods that are high in fiber.
Foods that have got good pre or probiotics, fermented foods. These are gonna be super duper, duper important. So what are some of these foods that look like this? Cuz I’ve really been working on, how do I get a little bit of fermented food in every day? Maybe it’s something like a Coconut Keifer, maybe it’s something like an almond yogurt.
Maybe you’re eating a little real sauerkraut, but try eating a little bit of that for the pre and probiotics, make sure that you’re getting a wide variety of fibers. I like to get that from food first. And then I always supplement with my extra fiber as well, but you’ll get that from things like nuts and seeds, avocados, legumes.
Apples. So get a wide range of fiber as well. All of this again is super important for feeding the good bacteria in your gut and having a really healthy gut microbiome, and also to have a healthy microbiome. You wanna make sure you’re staying away from food sprayed with pesticides. So when you look at the.
Crops are really sprayed with [00:15:00] pesticides. Gluten of course, all the gluten containing grains are getting hammered with glyphosate GMO, because one of the things happens with GMO crops is they have been genetically modified to be able to handle all those pesticides, to stay strong, amidst the pesticides, which means they’re getting absorbed into those crops.
So GMO corn and soy. Now what happens when you’ve got crops that are sprayed with these pesticides? Well, You can’t wash all of it off. It’s been absorbed. And if it’s absorbed in them, it’s absorbing in you. And if it’s absorbing in you, these pesticides can get in and they can disrupt your neurotransmitters, like your calming GABA.
And you’re happy serotonin. When you have low GABA levels, you’re gonna feel anxious when you have low serotonin, you’re gonna worry more and not sleep as well. And what do pesticides kill? They kill bugs. So if you’re getting pesticides in your food, guess what else is gonna take a, hit your microbiome?
The other thing that hurts [00:16:00] your microbiome or artificial sweeteners, artificial sweeteners to me are just a science experiment that went wrong. Like I can’t even believe they’re legal. When you look at artificial sweeteners to me, they’re poison, but I bring them up to share a little bit of good news around sweets.
Now, when you’re stressed, You probably want chocolate, right. Well, why is that? It’s because your serotonin’s probably low. And when your serotonin is low, you get anxious and irritable and then you can’t sleep, which just makes you more stressed. Well, here is the good news, the flavinols in dark chocolate boost brain function and can lower stress hormones, so they can actually help you stay more focused and calm.
So I want you to take that as permission, however you wanna make sure that you’re choosing something that’s got high cacoa count and ideally. It’s got no sugar added or very, very little sugar. One of the key things here is the higher the cacao count, like, you know, 85, [00:17:00] 90, 95, 99, you have very little sugar.
Or I use one of the brands that’s got that’s sweetened with either Lacanto, monk, fruit, Stevia. Right? So look around. There’s so many great options now. If you really love this stuff too, I’m just gonna do a shout out. FX chocolate has a great chocolate, no sugar added, and they actually have one that helps you sleep.
So there you go. Bonus there. All right. So I’ve given you a bunch of suggestions now. These are the ones that are usually most successful, but again, we’re all different. There’s you know, this, no one size fits all approach here. So you might have some outliers that may be causing issues. Like you may be sensitive to high histamine foods or oxalate.
And those are, by the way, if you’re like what those are compounds that are in some of the foods like beans and spinach, there may be some things that you want to tweak on your own. If you’ve done this and it’s gotten you this far and you go, okay, I need more. So again, take this as [00:18:00] foundational, try these things and then see if you need to go further.
There’s also some nutrients that can help you destress. Some you’ll get from your cleaning protein and healthy fat sources, but supplementing can really support your body’s response to stress. So here’s a couple ones that I really, really love. Number one, I love doing Epson salt’s bath is one way that I get my magnesium, but I also take magnesium body calm from right reignite wellness.
Every night before I go to sleep, I take three of those. Vitamin C is another big one. So when you’re stressed out, your adrenal glands need vitamin. . And so it is the number one vitamin used by your adrenal gland. So often when we’re under stress, we’re blowing through it. And I find that when you’re under stress, kind of two grams of vitamin C is a bare minimum.
and I like to do this in divided doses, but I find people under stress gen tend to do better with more. Maybe they do two grams twice a day. Okay. B vitamin is another thing that we tend to use up a lot more during stress or B [00:19:00] vitamins. So a good B complex. It should be in your multivitamin super duper important, and then omega threes.
So dampen the inflammation, get rid of the fire, but also they’re very calming. They can help as well. So all of those things are things that I love to do is foundational. For stress. There’s other there’s other ones too. But those to me are the foundation along with a good, healthy diet and good lifestyle stuff.
And of course, obviously along with food, I wanna make sure that you’re staying hydrated, especially for your brain. 80% of your brain is water. And when you’re dehydrated, you just don’t think as well. And here’s, what’s crazy. Even 2% dehydration can stress your cognitive abilities and your spatial abilities by 20%.
That’s crazy. So let’s talk caffeine. It is one of my favorite food groups, and it can be great for helping you with clarity and focus and cutting through the brain fog, but it can also be dehydrating and it can also make you more anxious and jittery if you’re [00:20:00] genetically more sensitive to it. So just kind of see, notice what you’re noticing there.
Now, if the idea of cutting out coffee gives you anxiety, keep it, but give decaf a try too. I’ll tell you. What I do is we do coffee in the morning. And we do half decaf, half regular, and then if I’m gonna do it, I’ll switch to green tea in the afternoon. So again, just see how you are. I’m a faster caffeine metabolizer.
See how you do with it. Some people have to only have it first thing in the morning, or it makes them, you know, difficult to sleep that night. Now, same thing with green tea. If you don’t already drink green tea, you have to get it on green tea. Green tea just makes you feel good. In fact, I have it right here.
This is my green tea. It makes you feel good. It does a ton of good things for your health from fighting heart disease and obesity to preventing type two diabetes. And for fighting stress, it has an amino acid called L-theanine, and L-atheanine naturally reduces blood pressure and anxiety. In fact, L-theanine helps your body produce GABA and GABA is the number one calming neuro-transmitter.[00:21:00]
So now you got the right food on your plate or in your smoothie, right? That’s it. First thing you got the right food on your plate or in your smoothie, when is the best time to eat for stress and anxiety. Okay. First of all, I can tell you it’s not late at night and it’s not all the time. All right. So let’s just say right here, we’ll all agree that constant grazing and snacking are off the table.
Okay. And eating late at night. Can we. Now when you snack or anytime you eat your body restarts digestion. So now it’s not absorbing and utilizing food and it gets stored as fat. So your insulin levels increase, which means you’re raising your risk of insulin resistance and sabotaging your metabolism.
Your entire system is just more stressed and potentially inflamed, especially if you’re packing on. a lot of important things happen when you’re not eating. There’s something called the migrating motor complex. And this happens in you’re small intestine, when you’re no longer digesting food, like after about four [00:22:00] to six hours, basically it’s cleaning time and it goes in there and takes care of undigested food, particles, and bacteria sweeps them out of your stomach and small intestine into your colon.
So you gotta give that a chance to. So that leads to the real secret weapon. One of the most immediate ways to de-stress, your body is with intermittent fasting. It’s just giving your body a rest. Start by slowly stretching the time between meals until you can go at least four hours. And you no longer need that snack as a crutch, you’re fasting is windows.
When you’re gonna heal your inflammation, you’re gonna stabilize your blood sugar and you’re gonna burn storage fat for fuel. So you wanna stretch the time between dinner and your morning meal until you get to at least 12 hours and 14 is better. Now here’s the easy thing. You’re gonna stop eating at least three hours before bed and bonus points.
If you can get that walk in after dinner, because it helps lower your blood sugar. And it’s, that’s another great thing for lowering stress and. Now here’s the [00:23:00] deal lowering your stress and anxiety is really life or death important. Chronic stress and anxiety creates systemic inflammation, and that can lead to chronic disease.
But the yin to the yang is that in order to get the full benefit of eating, to reduce stress and anxiety, you also have to not eat things that are gonna increase it. So you’ll wanna avoid foods that have a high stress impact on your body, especially. Sugar, you knew I was gonna say it. If you’re a stress eater and you sooth with sugary snacks, it can become a vicious cycle that just keeps you stressed because when you’re stressed, your hunger hormones are high and cortisol is high and cortisol increases appetite and increases cravings for more sugary foods, sugar stresses your system more.
So you keep craving the foods that are hurting. And around and around and around we go. So I want you to jump on the intermittent fasting bandwagon, and wait till you see how quickly [00:24:00] fasting can help. And then when it’s mealtime, remember protein comes first and then we get those non-starchy vegetables and fats.
So we got the protein, fat and fiber foods to help heal your gut. Along with those nutrients. I already mentioned, when you do eat, ideally you wanna be sitting. And eating slowly and taking the time to actually enjoy your food and for speed de-stressing be sure to do other things that will help you address stress and anxiety as.
Couple things that come to mind, high intensity interval training. That’s a great one. It’s where you go all out and recover. So maybe you, you sprint and you walk it off sprint and you walk it off sprint and you walk it off, teaches your sympathetic nervous system, how to handle stress better, or you get mindful and you do some yoga and just kind of slow it down.
Or you walk after a meal and also, gotta make sure you’re sleeping. I want you to get seven to nine hours of solid quality uninterrupted [00:25:00] sleep every night, cuz being rested helps you have a longer fuse, right? It helps you crush cravings. It makes it so you’re not as hungry. It helps your body burn fat.
Now here’s the challenge. The challenge is stress can make it hard for you to get to sleep and especially to stay asleep. So if you’re struggling with that, try my sleep candy. Also a couple things that I love, I love little lavender on the pillow. Or a lavender and a diffuser. And I love taking a hot Epson salts bath before bed.
Another thing that I do is meditation. I mean, this really works for me. This has been something I’ve done for the last year and a half. Now. There’s other ways you can work on your mindset, gratitude practices, journaling, or I got the best. One of all pet your puppies, you know, no one likes it, but stress is here to.
So the reality is we’ve got to have the tools in our toolkit to handle it better, and we’ve gotta change our perception of it too. Right. Perception becomes reality. [00:26:00] I know these strategies will do that for you. They’ve worked for me. They’ve worked for thousands of other people I’ve worked with. So I wanna know how it goes for you now, if you’d like more healthy, goodness, be sure to keep tuning in.
Because I’m gonna keep pushing it out here and I’ll see you next time in the next video where we’re gonna tackle what to eat when to eat and why. For gut health
for more info on this and other health topics I cover or to rate and review, find me on Instagram, Facebook, and my website, JJvirgin.com. And don’t forget to subscribe to my show. So you won’t miss a single episode. Go to subscribetojj.com. Thanks again for being with me this week.