People are ridiculously stressed these days and they usually attribute this to work, family obligations, or other outside factors. When sometimes it could actually be that their gut imbalances are ramping up their stomach issues and inflammation and anxieties.

Mostly, when people are stressed and they go see their GPs, they're told to relax, meditate, or take antidepressants. But what if your chronic stress is due to an underlying biological condition such as poor gut health?

Most conventionally trained physicians have little training about other causes of stress, like blood sugar imbalances, hidden infections, and how these can disrupt your body's biological balance.

Did you know that your brain and your gut are connected via the vagus nerve and this can perpetuate the cycle of stress and gut health? Stress can affect your gut health negatively and cause you to have insomnia, fatigue, bloating, abdominal pain, and issues like that.

Stress also reduces the motility of your gut, and this can cause things to not move along and just stagnate there and encourages bacterial overgrowth. A little bit of stress every now and again is not a bad thing but when you have chronic, long term stress along with poor gut health and poor diet. This can create less than ideal circumstances in your gut especially when it comes to stomach acid.

When people go to their physicians, and they're told to do the whole relaxation and meditation-- which is valid-- and take antidepressants. They're told these things without looking for the underlying causes of their chronic stress.

But in my practice, we look at them from a north to south and we look at the hypothalamus, the pituitary adrenal axis, see what's going on there, see where the dysfunction there is, we're looking at gut health as well.

Then we're able to put together something so we can better support the stress system and support their overall health. We also encourage and educate on coping mechanisms for your stress.

Things like massage and gardening and singing and dancing like no one's watching. My absolute favorite meditation and breathwork. Whatever brings you peace and lessens the impact of stress on you. So long as it's legal, I say go for it.