Marie-Noelle Marquis (00:00:07):
Welcome to the AIP Summit Podcast, your go-to resource for taking control of your autoimmune health, presented by AIP Certified Coaches. Hi, I'm Marie-Noelle Marquis.
Jaime Hartman (00:00:17):
And I'm Jaime Hartman. And we're here to equip you with the tools knowledge and support you need to effectively use the autoimmune protocol.
Marie-Noelle Marquis (00:00:24):
And today we are talking about ways to more effectively manage stress while navigating life with autoimmune disease.
Jaime Hartman (00:00:40):
We say all the time that AIP is so much more than a diet that in fact it's a protocol with multiple areas of focus and that one of those areas of focus is learning how to better deal with and manage emotional and mental stress. Today's episode features the audio from a live webinar that happened in May, 2023 on stress management and the autoimmune protocol. This webinar features a panel that includes me along with three other AIP Certified Coaches who you'll hear introduce themselves at the beginning. Now, as you listen, you're going to notice that we were speaking to a live virtual audience, some of whom had submitted questions in advance, and that we are referencing slides that the virtual audience can see. If you are a member of the AIP Summit community, you'll be able to find these slides in the archives. Just look in the 2023 section and find the May webinar, or we would be happy to send you a copy via email. There's a link in the show notes where you can submit a request.
Marie-Noelle Marquis (00:01:41):
Yeah, but if you just want to listen to the audio, that is fine. Also, we're confident that you'll find the insights and advice offered by colleagues both informative and inspiring. If you'd like to be part of the live virtual audience for future webinars like this one, be sure to sign up for the newsletter at aipsummit.com or follow us on Instagram so you know when they're happening and can submit your own questions.
Jaime Hartman (00:02:04):
Now without any further ado, let's listen to that recording from the webinar in May, 2023. You will hear us pop in individually a couple times with our thoughts and some special offers to help you de-stress your AIP experience and then both of us will be back on the other side to wrap things up.
(00:02:20):
Welcome everyone. You're here for a live webinar, stress Management and the Autoimmune Protocol featuring the folks you see pictured here who I will all introduce in a moment. First, just a quick disclaimer. As always, the content that we present in these sessions is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Alright, introductions. So I know we have two of the three additional panelists on here. We're missing one, she may just be joining late. If not, we will cover for her, but I'm going to get started and let them introduce themselves and then we'll go from there. I'm going to start with Dr. Sybil Cooper and then we'll have Christian introduce herself and then we're waiting on Laura. We'll see if she joins in time to introduce herself. Otherwise, we'll then carry on. So Sybil, please introduce
Sybil Cooper (00:03:34):
Herself. Hello everyone. I'm happy to be here with you today. I'm an immunologist by training. I also hold multiple certifications in AIP sleep from Primal Health Coach Institute, as well as the School of Applied Functional Medicine. You can see my website there below just with cooper.com. Some of my passions are raising monarch butterflies and eastern black volatiles. So if you have any interest in supporting the continued existence of those butterflies, please hit me in the DM and Instagram. I'm happy to share what I've learned over the years and I love Spartan racing being active, and I just love being out in nature. I'm a fellow autoimmune warrior with my diagnoses are Sjogren's syndrome, touch of lupus, my doctor likes to say, and myasthenia gravis. Thank you.
Jaime Hartman (00:04:42):
Thank you Sybil. Christian, you're up now.
Christian Allgood (00:04:45):
Alright. Hi guys. I'm Christian Allgood. So obviously I'm an AIP Certified Coach, but besides that, I got my early start as an aesthetician and then I got sick with autoimmune disease and had the wheels fall off everything and my body fall apart and then was diagnosed with Hashimoto's and myofascial pain syndrome, whole bunch of other things. Misdiagnosis is along the way. The whole story ended up going back to school. So now I am a functional nutritional therapy practitioner, a restorative wellness practitioner, and then also a certified trauma resilience coach. So I really love talking about stress and trauma and really just how that can really impact our healing when we're not addressing those things. We can be eating a perfect diet, taking all the supplements, but if we're not dealing with those, it's going to be really hard to heal. So really excited to see you guys today and be talking on this.
Jaime Hartman (00:05:44):
Great, thank you Christian. And Laura is here. Laura, we're just doing introductions. Please introduce yourself.
Laura Morrow (00:05:51):
Hello, I am Laura Morrow and I am obviously a nutritional therapy practitioner. I am an AIP Certified Coach, and I got started on this journey because of most of us, my own autoimmune issues. Mine started after the birth of my second son and I expected to be exhausted, but I did not expect the joint pain that came with it. That started in my feet and my hands moved to my shoulder, my knees, and after trying to get diagnosed from doctors, I couldn't get a diagnosis and I had to figure out this myself. And that's when I realized so many women were struggling with that and I was like, you know what? There is a different way. There's changes that you can make to the food that you're eating, to the way you're exercising, to how you're sleeping and how you're handling stress. And my biggest thing is that stress probably causes more flares than food for me. So I really work on the stress management piece and that's why I also decided to go back and get certified through the Academy for Integrative Medicine because that certification really worked a lot with women under stress and balancing hormones that has a lot to do with the stress hormones. So I found that to be a big need in myself and in my clients that I worked with.
Jaime Hartman (00:07:26):
Great, thank you Laura. And everybody's websites are on the screen right now and they will be at a few other points in the presentation. So if you hear something from someone that just really resonates and you want to connect with them later, please make a point of noting their website and looking 'em up. I'll also send it in the follow-up so it'll be clickable there. I'm Jaime Hartman. For those of you who don't know me, you can find more about me at my website, GutsyByNature.com. I have a master's degree in educational psychology and I just tell you that because I think that helps you to understand sort of the third leg of the triangle of what I really care about, and that is education. The other two legs are nutrition and autoimmunity. And so what I do with these AIP summits is bring all that together. And the same thing with the way I work with my clients. I really focus on teaching and educating as well as being supportive. So that's sort of the angle that I take. So Sybil, I'm going to let you take it away. If you guys can see me, I know you can. If you're watching live, you're going to see me disappear. I got to take care of the dog, but you're in good hands of Sybil while she answers this question. I am close by though.
Sybil Cooper (00:08:30):
Okay, so we thought that we would start out just talking about what stress is so that we're all on the same page. And as Laura mentioned for myself as well, stress is definitely a larger trigger for my autoimmune disease flares than food is. So food might make me feel uncomfortable for a couple of days, but stress will certainly bring on my full panel of autoimmune symptoms. And stress comes in many forms. So people often only think of emotional stress such as work stress, family dynamics, marriage stress, teen kid stress. For those of us with teens, financial issues, of course living in the environment we are now, there's a lot of social stress dealing with politics and race-based trauma as well as just exposure now to our 24 hour news cycles. There can be grudges and resentment, just anger, unexpressed emotions, and particularly I think even more pervasive now is a social isolation, loneliness, and a lack of social support.
(00:09:50):
Those are definitely huge sources of emotional stress and when looking at the most long-lived communities, while their nutritional patterns may vary, they all have in common a very strong sense of community. And community is just one of those things that helps to reduce stress. But we also can't negate the profound impacts of physical stress, particularly with activation of autoimmune disease flares. So that can be infections viral. I mean of course we know now that covid for folks with autoimmune disease can definitely trigger a flare post covid infection, bacterial infections, fungal infections, parasitic infections. If you travel out of the country and you acquire something insufficient sleep, sleep apnea is a huge trigger of oxidative stress on the body. We know that people who do shift work are at much higher incidences for autoimmune disease as well as people who do frequent travel that suffer from jet lag in crossing multiple time zones, stimulants, toxins that we encounter in our air water, in our food.
(00:11:10):
Too much exercise is also a very common stressor on the body as well as physical trauma. I know people who have gone into an autoimmune disease flare after a car accident, for example, allergen exposures including food sensitivities, which of course is one of the foundations of AIP to determine what those food sensitivities are for each individual person. And we also know that poor detoxification can be at the root of autoimmune disease as well as flares. So for example, in postmenopausal women, as we begin to break down bone, you can get the release of lead that's stored in bone, particularly for those of us that were children during the time of leaded gasoline. And so even though it's something that we're not currently being exposed to, it's something that may now then is being released into the body can trigger flares as we get older, as well as high and low blood sugar, which really impacts cortisol.
(00:12:24):
Cortisol is another huge trigger for the immune system and a regulator of the immune system, and so stress in that way can trigger autoimmune disease flares. And so they also define short-term stress as something that can last from minutes to hours. And that brief cortisol response is protective. It's actually mobilizing the immune system. You can imagine if you're an animal and you're hunting down prey or you're being hunted, there's a chance that you might get injured and you might need your immune system to come to your defense. So it makes sense that in times of short duration stress that our immune system is going to ramp up due to the effects of cortisol. However, a chronic stress that's lasting for hours each day for weeks or months, that can dysregulate the immune system so it can ramp up certain parts in the immune system and actually suppress other parts to make you either, depending on your genetics, which way you skew it can make you more or less acceptable to intracellular pathogens like viruses or extracellular pathogens like bacteria, fungi and parasites and can serve to really send you into a flare.
(00:13:55):
I wanted to just give you one, you don't have to understand this, but this is one of several proposed mechanisms of how stress directly leads to an autoimmune flare. And the parts that I have in bold is how stress through the vagus nerve actually activates an autoimmune flare. So stress activates the sympathetic nervous system that leads to systemic inflammation in the body due to secretion of various stress hormones. And this actually serves to decrease what's called the vagal tone. So the vagus nerve output and this in the gut leads to increased TNF alpha production and interleukin six production, which are two key cytokines that serve to increase inflammation and to mobilize the immune system. And it also serves to kind of push your T cells to the phenotype of cells, which is designated TH 22 that we think is one of the key instigators of autoimmune disease.
(00:15:05):
It also serves to downregulate cells that serve to put the brakes on. So you're adding gas and you're putting the brakes on the immune system by downregulating the T regulatory cells. And this then can actually modify your antibodies and make them more aggressive and more robust. And so this tends to lead to an autoimmune flare. And so we know so much more now about these mechanisms that serve to regulate and modulate the immune system as far as autoimmune disease. And so it's definitely a very exciting time for those of us in the field who like getting into the nitty gritty details. But I added this slide just to really impress upon you how important stress is to the AIP protocol. It's not just about nutrition, but it's about all these other lifestyle factors and certainly sleep modulates our ability to handle stress. Stress in turn impacts our sleep stress, lack of sleep impacts our ability to follow a nutritional protocol that may in itself be stressful. So definitely go beyond thinking of AIP as just the nutrition part, but stress is definitely in the management of stress, a key component to your success in managing your disease.
Jaime Hartman (00:16:46):
Hi everyone. Jaime here. If you have recently learned about the autoimmune protocol, you might be tempted to just find yourself a food list and jump right in immediately. But if you want to start AIP in a way that is sustainable and that doesn't stress you out, I strongly recommend giving yourself the gift of some time, time to plan and to prepare. I also want you to know that there are resources available so you don't have to bear all the responsibility of that planning all by yourself. My signature program, which is called Ready Set AIP provides 12 weeks of structured coaching support and it's offered on a rolling enrollment basis, which means that you can actually start anytime you want. The first five weeks are spent getting ready with specific directions for adjusting your diet to exclude certain foods and to include other foods each week as you learn about the protocol.
(00:17:42):
Then you'll have support from me as you get set with 30 days of maintaining the elimination phase. And then finally, you learn how to begin the reintroduction process so that you can ultimately determine the personalized, least restrictive long-term diet that allows you to experience your optimum state of autoimmune wellness, all of this without adding more stress to your life. To learn more, go to ready set aip.com and I'll also put a link to that in the show notes. And then when you're ready to enroll, be sure you use coupon code PODCAST and that needs to be an all uppercase letters for an exclusive discount. Now let's get back to the webinar. Next question is for Christian, and it is, why is it so hard for me to manage or reduce stress even when I know what I should do? And now that I've just heard what Dr. Cooper said, I know why I should, why is it still so hard?
Christian Allgood (00:18:49):
Isn't that the thing? It's like you know what you should be doing but you're not doing it. And I think even some of us professionals even have been there. I know that there's times that I struggle with it myself, so you guys are not alone out there. Even those that of us that are clinically trained that we know all the ins and outs of everything, sometimes we even struggle. And so knowing first and foremost that change is hard, right? We come up with habits that can be hard to break. And so just knowing that it can take some time to change those habits, change your thinking, and also realizing that if you're sitting there beating yourself up, I know what I'm supposed to be doing. Just why can't I do it? Adding that much more stress to yourself is not going to help. And so really take a step back, take a big deep breath, give yourself some grace.
(00:19:38):
Really look into as well looking for support, help. Maybe you need to hire a professional to help you with these things. We know community is another thing that's so big that we talk about in AIP, right? It's not just about a diet. It is the whole lifestyle overhaul. And do you have people that you can lean on and ask for help? What is going on that is contributing to your stress? And so can you get help for it? Another thing that I really do like to focus on is not just on how can we manage and reduce stress, but also how can we bring in joy? How can we bring in those things that make us happy? Because when we're doing these healing journeys, it can feel like it's just this ongoing list of things that were, I have to do this and I have to do this.
(00:20:25):
When you already have life that's happening, we don't want a healing protocol then to add even more stress to your life. And so what are some things that you can add to your life that lights you up? Another big thing that can be hard for people to manage and reduce stress is understanding a stress bucket. So Dr. Sybil just went over all these different stressors. And so that is a big thing, is understanding that stress is not just psychological or emotional stressors to the body can be any number of things. And so when you have a stress bucket overflowing from toxins in your environment from food sensitivities, you're eating nutritional deficiencies from maybe you have mold, maybe you have Lyme, bacterial infections, hidden viruses, all these different things that then fills the stress bucket. And so when it's high, you're going to become more reactive to any little stress. Your body's not going to be able to handle it. And so any minor inconvenience you might find yourself blowing up and it's just because your stress bucket is already that high. And so I do recommend identifying and writing out what some of these stressors might be that are filling your stress bucket. So take an inventory, go over emotional, go over environmental, physical, chemical.
(00:21:46):
These are all different things that we want to address when we talk about stress. Knowing that as we minimize these things, we can do a little bit better in handling 'em. And then know that stress hormones can be addictive. When someone's body gets used to running on things like adrenaline and cortisol, it can be hard for the body to turn that off. And sometimes people nervous system may be stuck in a sympathetic dominance of fight or flights, and for some people it could be for years. Some people are even born this way. If the mother had high cortisol levels and was in a stress response the whole time, that child is then born with their nervous system set that way. And so calm can be hard for a lot of these individuals. It's going to feel hard to find difficult to just feel and sit with, especially when you're used to chaos and being in a state of hypervigilance.
(00:22:44):
And so understanding that you might know what you should be doing, why you should be doing it, but your nervous system can still really be struggling with doing it. So again, it's one of those things that give yourself some grace, don't beat yourself up. This is where understanding all the ins and outs of stress is important so that you can understand it's more than just like, oh, I got bills or family stress or work stress. It really is a little bit more than that. And then I'd like to just go over just some easy wins to help lower the stress buckets. Caffeine is a huge one like Dr. Sibbel had mentioned in hers. I think you'll see some recurring things in some of our slides is stimulants. Caffeine is really going to push out that cortisol, and that's something that we want to help minimize with being high stressed.
(00:23:42):
And so minimizing caffeine and stimulants and then doing AIP. We're avoiding a lot of known food sensitivities. We're lowering inflammation. A big goal is not just avoiding foods, but really packing in those nutrient dense foods to replenish vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Regulating your blood sugar is something that half protein and fat with every meal, and a lot of people don't know that they've done all the other things and don't realize that not regulating their blood sugar is then also adding to the stress on the body. If your blood sugar is dropping and all over the place, your adrenal glands got to kick out that cortisol to get your blood sugar back up. And so supporting the body in that way is going to be big. And then minimizing toxin exposures. Again, those are more stressors to the body. So are you getting filtered water?
(00:24:34):
Removing anything with the term fragrance from your life, from your house is going to be a great way to get some stress out of the body, right? And one big thing I love is clove and Lyme essential oil on the cervical spine to help support the nervous system is great. And just understanding that in life is not just about avoiding stress, it's about becoming resilient to stress. And so the more we can lower that burden, the more resilient that we can become to stress. Then just understanding some ways to support the stress response system of the body. And again, helping to lower the stress bucket. Grounding outside in the sunlight, especially the morning sunlight is amazing. I actually was feeling kind of tired before we got on this call, and I went outside and got barefoot on the grass and stood out in the sun and did some breathing and then felt re-energized.
(00:25:28):
So really some great, easy, cheap, right free, you go stand outside, it's free doing some vagus nerve exercises. So you heard Dr. Simbel talk about the vagus nerve. This is huge. Definitely might be something you're like, what in the heck is that? Google it. Google vagus nerve exercises. They are simple and can help you tremendously. And then meditation, breath works, somatics, acupuncture, chiropractic, right? Because again, physical stressors not being in alignment can add more stress to the body. Doing things like craniosacral therapy, DNRS, counseling, all of these things can really help people with their stress and stress buckets. And then finally, trauma being a huge one. Again, when we get locked in that fight or flight, understanding that it's going to be a lot harder to manage and reduce stress because you're already over that stress bucket. It is full. You are constantly firing out those stress hormones which lead to inflammation and feed the autoimmune.
(00:26:36):
And so really understanding is this something that's a root of the issue for you? Because again, we can be doing the diet, we can be doing the supplements if we're not addressing stress, if we're not addressing trauma, those things that are inside us in our spirits, we're going to have difficulty healing. And so the trauma resilience protocol or TRP is something that I do. It's an NLP technique. And so that's something that can really help those with PTSD from trauma help move the nervous system out of that fight or flight into a more rest state so that you can get some healing. And so that's it for me. So hopefully there's some good for some of you.
Jaime Hartman (00:27:21):
The question for Laura is we'll bring this now full circle. What about what we eat? How does stress impact nutrition? Are there nutrients I should be eating more of during stressful times? And by the way, I love that the person who asked this question said things they should be eating more of. They didn't ask us about supplements because we can get most of this from food and plug them full supply as long as we know what foods they are. And that's how I know Laura's going to answer it. Not to say there's anything wrong with the supplement if you need it, but we'll start with the food, right? So Laura, take it away.
Laura Morrow (00:27:52):
Yep, absolutely. So yes. So basically, as Dr. Sibbel mentioned, if you're running away from a lion or a bear or something like that, your body is in fight or flight and your body needs resources to be able to get away and survive. So being in fight or flight mode places a great burden and a lot of demand on the body to make sure that we have the energy to run away. We make sure that we have the oxygen and we have make sure that we have the nutrients that we need to supply all that for survival. And so these nutrients that get depleted, that get used up when your body is in fight or flight, and these days we're not necessarily running away from something, but your body goes through the same kind of response and uses these nutrients up at a much higher rate when you're stressed.
(00:29:03):
So it's the nutrients that basically support your energy production. You need to have the energy to get away from the stressor, your cognitive function, that's your brain and how your brain's working. If you're having a lot of brain fog and things like that, that can be produced by stress and your immune system, just like she said, your immune system needs to be activated when you are in a situation that you could get hurt. And so it's working over time and using those nutrients at a much larger rate than it should be normal. And just nutrients that just affect your overall performance. So if you just feel bad, you just feel like you're not at optimal health, stress can really do that to you. So what I found is that nutrients that are depleted by psychological and environmental stressors, your B vitamins and B vitamins can be found mostly in organ meat, meat, seafood, and some leafy greens as well.
(00:30:12):
Magnesium. That magnesium helps calm your nervous system, your nervous system gets really out of whack when you don't have enough. So beet greens, dried prunes, avocados are all great for that. And I put in R for re intros because I know some people on this webinar had started their re intros. Nuts, seeds, chickpeas and dark chocolate are re intros that you might want to look at before. Other things, if stress is a big part of your life, and a lot of people eat chocolate when they're stressed, there really is a nutritional deficiency going on. So that can be good news, right? More need for chocolate, vitamin C, citrus, strawberries, cruciferous veggies, those actually cruciferous veggies in particular out of veggies help you balance your stress hormones like cortisol, so those are really good. So cruciferous veggies like broccoli and cauliflower, zinc oysters are by far the best natural source of zinc, but also red meat, poultry, crab, lobster, mushroom, spinach, broccoli, garlic, kale and rero, nuts and beans, calcium, and a lot of people think automatically milk with calcium, but you can also find it in dried figs, broccoli, kale, sweet potato mustard and collared greens and intro nuts and beans.
(00:31:58):
I will tell you, you see the nuts and seeds in here a lot with the re intros. When I went on an AIP retreat with Dr. Sarah Ballantine, she told me that nuts and seeds, she put those on the AIP no list because so many people really do have sensitivity issues to them, but if you do not have a sensitivity issue to them, you should be eating them every single day. So those should be early on in your re-intro list. And if you do okay with them, you should be eating them because they have, as you see, lots of really, really great benefits. Iron as well. Organ meat, again, red meat, pork, poultry, seafood, dark leafy greens and dried fruit, again, rero beans and nuts. And if you eat iron and vitamin C in the same meal, it helps you absorb both better.
(00:33:02):
So those are good things to pair up to eat together. And then vitamin D, salmon, sardines, cod, liver, oil, can tuna, mushrooms, and sunlight is really the best source of vitamin D. So going out, like I think Christian mentioned, going out in the sun, especially in the morning, can help you get that vitamin D before the rays are at the higher levels and can help you also kickstart your circadian rhythm with your body knowing it's morning, knowing it's supposed to be awake and energized at that time. So that's a really great thing to do. So these vitamins and minerals that you see here are really essential for your body having optimal physical and mental functioning. And when the body lacks these key nutrients, you'll see symptoms such as depression, anxiety, moodiness, decreased cognitive function like brain fog, sleep issues, fatigue, joint and muscle pain and more. And if you see that there's a lot of foods listed here, but if you really boil it down, you've got organ meat, meat, seafood, vegetables, and some dried fruit in there that really is the bulk. And so AIP fits perfectly with a diet that is for someone who has a lot of stress.
(00:34:43):
So then the next slide, yep, thanks. So to help you regulate your cortisol levels. So your cortisol is your stress hormones, so to make sure that those are balanced, increasing your vegetables, most of us, even on AIP, are probably not eating enough servings of vegetables a day. So really six servings should be a minimum amount and eight or more is even better and go by servings. Sometimes servings are smaller amounts than you think. So really look at those servings of vegetables that you're eating, omega fatty acids that are mostly in fish and seafood, and then again, rero nuts and seeds that will really help you with your cortisol. Again, the magnesium, like we mentioned on the other page, vitamins B, C and D melatonin. And that is melatonin is actually a hormone that helps regulate your circadian rhythm. So a lot of people think of it as a sleep aid, which it's not.
(00:35:51):
It just helps your body get into the right cycle of knowing when it's daytime to be awake and when it's nighttime to be asleep. If you are taking melatonin and it's giving you bad dreams or doesn't seem to be working, then you might have too much melatonin hormone in your body, so be careful with that one. But you can also get more, your body will produce more natural melatonin if you're going in the sunlight during sunlight hours and keeping your house dark in nighttime hours when it should be sleep time and not having a lot of screens and lights on and things like that so you can help your body get back into that natural rhythm. And then some herbs that you can use to alleviate stress and anxiety too. And you can get these from teas, from essential oils, and also from supplements are things like lavender, valerian, root, kava, passion, fruit, turmeric, and chamomile.
(00:36:55):
Okay? So when those cortisol levels are regulated, when those stress hormones are in the right balance where you want them to be, this is going to help relieve your stress, your depression, and your anxiety. It's going to help improve your mood, it's going to help improve your cognitive function, and it's going to help regulate your sleep. It's so important, and like Jaime mentioned, we try to get this from our food as much as possible, but when you are in the high stress, and that can be from all those factors that Dr. Sybil was saying, including the physical stress that we're going through in an autoimmune disease, you may need more support in the beginning and it can be so important to work with a coach who can tell which things your body might need that extra support with and what you might be able to get with food. So that is a really good thing. You don't want to load up on a lot of things, but your body just might need some extra to help you get to that place until your buddy can take over and do it on its own. Thank
Jaime Hartman (00:38:06):
You. Now we're going to share some tips for making the diet part of AIP less stressful. We all know it can be, depending on what your way of living and eating was before you started AIP, it can be an extremely intense transition. And so we've all been through it ourselves and we've coached many people through it as well. So here are some of the tips that we have come up with that we wanted to share with you. And again, we put 'em all on one slide so that you could take a picture of it while we're talking. But I'm going to let Sybil, if you want to just quick share a couple of the tips. I don't remember who put what in here because we collaborated on this, but just give us a little bit about what are some of your top tips.
Sybil Cooper (00:38:53):
Probably one of my top tips is when you're going through an AIP protocol and rero, just learn to say no. Just know that we talk about hermetic stressors. So stressors that help the body to be more resilient, and that's the ultimate goal of AIP, is to help your body be more resilient. So you may have to say no to outside commitments, extra work demands signing up for that PTA committee that everyone's pressuring you to chair in order to lower your stress bucket as was mentioned, so that you can really take the time for yourself to focus on your healing protocol. That's probably my biggest one. Learn to say and know it can be a sentence.
Jaime Hartman (00:39:50):
Yeah, I love that phrase. No is a complete sentence, and if you're going to be doing AIP, you're taking on a lot of tasks, it's probably going to take you some extra time. So you've got to say no to something and it can't be no to your sleep time. It can't be no to your time to take care of your family. It needs to be known to other things needs. So I think that's a fantastic tip. Alright, Christian, your top tip from this list or just elsewhere?
Christian Allgood (00:40:18):
Yeah, the biggest thing I tell all my clients is have a to go food bag with shelf stable AIP foods. It's one of these things that I've told the story before, but when I first started AIP, we went to a festival and I seriously was bawling because I was starving and there was nothing I could eat. And so from there it was kind of like, okay, so now I have one of the big freezer bags from Trader Joe's full of things, epic bars, guys. These are lifesavers, canned sardines, coconut chips, canned olives, applesauce packs. I mean, I'll even put olive oil in there, so if there's maybe a salad I can get somewhere, I at least have some dressing to do myself.
(00:41:05):
My biggest thing is just be prepared when you go out and you might think you're only going to be out for a little bit and then you find that you're not, you're out longer and now you're starving. And so having some good snacks on hand and I tell everyone, just use it like a diaper bag. It goes in and out of the house with you and keep it stocked. So there's a lot of different things you can find that works for you, but I'll put paper plates in there, paper towels, it's like a picnic bag that will go with us when we go out and about. And so fully healthy.com used to be Shop AIP is an amazing site to find those things. So that's my biggest recommendation to make AIP less stressful.
Jaime Hartman (00:41:48):
All right. And then Laura, your top tip.
Laura Morrow (00:41:51):
Yeah, my top tip is to make sure that you're asking for help and getting help from other people, really explaining to, I explained to my family and my friends what I had going on help wise and what I was doing about it and about AIP and why it was so important. When people really know why and how bad you're feeling, how bad you're really suffering, they're a lot more likely to pitch in and want to help than if they think that you're just kind of doing a fad. So that's really helpful. And so as part of that, having people understand is like don't go around cooking a whole separate meal for your family all the time and something separate for you. I make one meal, sometimes I put in an extra, like some rice or some bread or some pasta as a side for my other family members, but they usually eat pretty much what I eat, at least for the main meals, and they've gotten used to that. And my son, I have small sons and that's what they're used to. And my first grader loves broccoli. He requests broccoli for dinner now sometimes, and you would've never made me believe that in a million years, a few years ago. But he really loves broccoli. And so by doing these things sometimes we can feel so guilty. Oh my gosh, we're making other people do this stuff, but we're also helping change their health and change their lives as well. So don't be afraid of that.
Jaime Hartman (00:43:40):
He knows that those cruciferous, he knows those cruciferous vegetables are good for his stress.
Laura Morrow (00:43:44):
That's right, that's right. That's loves them.
Jaime Hartman (00:43:47):
His little body noses. You were going to add something? I'm sorry, I cut you off.
Sybil Cooper (00:43:50):
Yeah, I was going to add something to what Laura said, and I've heard from so many people that family members will also by eating this way because they're eating what you're cooking, they make the connection that some nagging symptoms that they are having, even though they do not, they have no autoimmune diagnosis, is related to some food that they're having. So it could be that annoying postnasal drip that you wake up every morning and because they're dairy free, they realize that that's gone or they're not getting headaches or they have more regular bowel movements. And so it can be a good experience for everyone to go through
Marie-Noelle Marquis (00:44:38):
Taking the stress off your plate. Not only is it a key component in healing, it is also our motto at Urban AIP. For our listeners who don't know, I am the founder of an AIP dedicated meal company called Urban AIP. We offer meales and different sizes and at the frequency of your choice with the goal to bring healing to your table and convenience back into your life. I started Urban AIP because of my own experience and my own challenges with the dietary portion of the autoimmune protocol. I felt personally overwhelmed with the burden of cooking all my meals. And I was not only running out of time to address important lifestyle changes to help me heal, but it was really adding an additional layer of stress to my stress bucket to my life. So I became determined to find a solution that would bring AIP dietary convenience to our doors, while also being a hundred percent organic nutrient dense, crafted by nutrition professionals who understood the AIP protocol using only wild caught efficiency food, pasture raised meat, and also keeping us safe from extra toxins and chemicals.
(00:45:45):
And we achieve this by using non GMO plant-based materials for our meal trays and packaging and also making sure food never comes into contact with plastic or aluminum in our commercial kitchen. So if you feel like this might be a good tool to support your AIP journey, visit [email protected]. You can sign up for our newsletter and also follow us on social media. We run a lot of unique specials on our social media pages and this year we're also focusing on collaboration. So collaborating with other AIP brands and AIP Certified Coaches. Our menu is also seasonal, so you can stay up to date with our latest offerings and we are offering a special right now for our podcast listeners, so you can simply use the code PODCAST at checkout for a discount on your first box. Alright, Jaime, thank you. And take us back to the webinar.
Jaime Hartman (00:46:38):
Alright, so now we're going to answer some of the questions that you guys submitted to us. These are the ones that we picked out that either we saw repeating themes, so we kind of were answering more than one question at once or that we knew we had good answers to. I know we're not getting to everybody's question, so I'm going to share on the next slide a place where you can get even more questions answered in another format if we didn't get to yours. And then if anybody wants to add questions to the q and a, you are welcome to. But I can tell you now looking at the clock, we're probably not going to have a lot of time to get to them, but you can try and see. So if you have a question you want us to answer, put it in the q and a. If you have a tip to share, it goes in the chat so everybody sees it. Okay, everybody got that? Alright, so we've already kind of written these out and who's going to answer them? The first one's going to go to Christian and we're going to do these kind of rapid style. But the first question is for you Christian, it comes from Jane. She would love some tips for minimizing the stress around travel. And there were a couple other people who asked about travel too.
Christian Allgood (00:47:38):
Yes, I love this one. I did a lot of long car rides and flying on AIP and so big thing is I used to feel like I had to clean the house before I left on a trip. I didn't want to come home to a messy house and then by the time I got to my destination I was flaring. So I think really planning rest before and after is going to be huge for the stress as far as diets concerned, like I said, having those to-go bags, even when you're flying, having those shelf stable foods that you can fly with is huge. Researching some of the restaurants around you, I feel like you can't go wrong with a lettuce wrap burger when you're on AIP. It's like the safest thing when you're out and about. And if cost is a concern other than that, you can get some grilled meats and some veggies.
(00:48:33):
But I think, yeah, that's the biggest thing is planning, knowing where you're going to be, what kind of options you have for food and rest, lots of hydration, especially if you're flying, flying dehydrates, you so get some electrolytes, trace minerals in your water. That's the first thing I do when I get to an airport is I'm going to getting two liters of water. That way I can be hydrating the whole time for me, getting dehydrated will flare my body. So yeah, hopefully those are some good ones. Just yeah, manage stress plan good and have some easy shelf stable foods that you can take with you while you find restaurants to eat at.
Jaime Hartman (00:49:09):
Great, thank you. The next question comes from Isabelle. Laura's going to take this one. How do I handle things when I discover I have overcommitted and I can't cancel? Cancel? Oh Laura, you're going to solve all of Isabelle's problems here in the next two minutes. I'm going to try.
Laura Morrow (00:49:28):
Oh my gosh. I remember a couple of years ago at the end of the school year, all of a sudden I was getting used to this with my oldest son and all of a sudden all the things at the end of the Ute school year of the celebrations and the parties and the requirements for school and the end of the year with sports, all of those happened at the same time. This poor little guy was in the first grade and had multiple things a night he was supposed to do. And I was like, oh my gosh, I can't believe this happened. And so I realized we had to really prioritize because everything was important. He was supposed to be doing everything but the little guy literally could not be in two places at once. And so we just had to make the tough decisions. What is the priority?
(00:50:28):
What is required by the school? Well that needs to go first. Like his TaeKwonDo testing that he had to do, he had to go to the classes to be able to complete the testing to move to the next level. So we had to just make priorities of what is the most important. And even if you feel like you can't cancel things, it comes down to you can't be in the same place at one time. So you have involve other people. Sometimes you can divide and conquer, sometimes you can delegate things and sometimes you just have to make those tough decisions and say no. And I know that's so hard, that just kills me sometimes. But it really is just necessary, especially when you've overcommitted. And then I used that time as a lesson of like, okay, what do I need to do the next school year to make sure that that doesn't happen again?
(00:51:42):
Now that he's been at the school for a year, I know the activities that are coming up. I signed him up for less things the next school year and I made sure that things weren't so scheduled. And I use those lessons still to this day in signing up our family for activities and events of what is the priority, what are the top things and work down from there. And so it, it's just making those tough decisions and as much as you can, making the tough decisions before you get into that situation, asking for help and then knowing that sometimes you have to disappoint people, but use that to learn for it to be successful next time.
Jaime Hartman (00:52:37):
Thanks, Laura. That's great. Alright, the next question comes from Barbara Sybil's going to answer this one. Why does stress and cortisol wake me up in the middle of the night and keep me awake?
Sybil Cooper (00:52:48):
So there are several reasons that can happen, and one is just stress can dysregulate your cortisol. Cortisol should be highest in the morning. That serves to increase your blood sugar to give you energy to wake up. It increases your blood pressure, it raises your body temperature just so that you're ready to take on the day. And then that wanes towards the end of the evening. And at the same time, melatonin is increasing, which helps to prepare your body for sleep. So if you're under a lot of stress and your cortisol instead is spiking in the evening, then especially when you transition between that deep sleep and the light sleep, that cortisol spike is going to override your melatonin. It's going to wake you up. It's a time when you're more alert to the surroundings. And so it can be a sound that's waking you up, a light in your bedroom, someone snoring, and of course if you're under stress and then you start ruminating about something going on in your life that's going to keep you awake.
(00:54:07):
I don't know how old you are, but if you're perimenopausal that drop in progesterone, especially in combination with stress, it makes us less resilient to dealing with stress. And so many women that are perimenopausal, menopausal, suffer from sleep disruptions. Again, particularly in that transition between deep and light sleep, which if you're going to bed between 10 and 11:00 PM that's going to be between two and 3:00 AM. Another reason can be if you're having some sort of sugar dysregulation. So let's say you've gone AIP and you've cut out all the processed foods and you unknowingly really decrease your carbohydrate intake, especially at dinner, you could be suffering a blood glucose drop. And so again, especially at that deep sleep to light sleep transition that drop in blood glucose, your brain is going to activate that cortisol to wake you up to search for food, to activate that hunger.
(00:55:18):
And the cortisol also helps to increase your blood sugar. And so I would suggest, oh, one other thing can be too, if you're not getting that early morning sunlight that Laura mentioned, which serves to produce serotonin in the morning, and that is later going to become your melatonin, if your melatonin bucket is already low and your cortisol bucket is high, that can also cause wakefulness at night. So are you getting a good 1520 minutes of sunlight on your face as soon as you wake up around at least seven to 8:00 AM If you want to have that sleep pressure about 10:00 PM You can also look at if you've transitioned to a lot of people now having dinner much earlier and you're kind of getting the hunger pains, just a small snack of protein and carbohydrates can serve to keep your blood glucose steady during the night. So you can play with food timing, food composition of your dinner, making sure you have some slow carbs there, as well as just a slight snack before dinner. One great thing about AIP is that it does help to regulate and stabilize blood sugar. And so while you make these changes, that change may cause some disruption as your body heals and gets healthier. Hopefully that will resolve. But certainly that's where an AIP coach can help you to tease out what may be causing your wakefulness, whether it's stress, sex hormones or blood sugar dysregulation.
Jaime Hartman (00:57:10):
Great, thank you. Yeah, that was great. Okay, so we have five minutes left. We could go a few minutes over, but I don't want to go more than a few minutes over. So we're going to try to answer these remaining questions. The next question came from Jean, and it was, if stress can be a factor that brings on autoimmune diseases, why can reducing or overcoming stress not cure the disorder? Why can't we just unstress ourselves and autoimmune disease ourself, I think is what she's trying to say. So I love that, and obviously I don't know that anybody could answer that in one or two minutes, but Christian's going to at least give us a little bit of an answer for this.
Christian Allgood (00:57:49):
Yeah, I'll throw some stuff at it fast. So first, realizing that the whole setup to develop autoimmune disease is more than just stress. We have genetics, environmental factors, different kinds of stressors, and so often what we see is some of them are addressed, but often not all of 'em. And so it could be for some people, there's other things hiding in their body that need to be addressed, like stealth infections. And also knowing that you'll hear a lot of us say that we're in remission. We don't ever say that we're cured because we know that a night without sleep stress might trigger an autoimmune flareup for us. And so once we have these things activated, it's hard to just get rid of. It's more about minimizing those things in your life that's going to keep it on a constant on flare cycle. And so I think that's just the biggest thing is understanding that we can do a lot of things to help reverse some of it, to help make the body stronger, more resilient.
(00:58:49):
But again, it's one of these things that there's a lot to look at when we develop autoimmune disease. And so even for myself, I think I probably talked about in another webinar is I made it so far and then I hit a wall and then I found out I had Lyme back in the fall. And so it's like, oh, I've had this bacteria hiding out that's contributing to more things. And that's part of the stress burden, right? Part of that bucket. And so that's why it's not so easy to just cure it. A lot of times, those of us that have a chronic illness, there's multiple things going on, and so there is a lot to address and it takes time. But I know for a lot of us, we went from being very, very ill to now having a great quality of life. And so I think that's the big thing to focus on is that sometimes it takes a while to get used to having a diagnosis. First of all, wrapping your head around having a diagnosis and then what does life look like now versus where you were before you got sick, and knowing that you can be at a better place as long as we're addressing all these different things.
Jaime Hartman (00:59:54):
And then let's take the next question. We'll see how much time we have left. It was from Misty and Laura's going to, I think, yeah, Laura's going to answer this one. Since restricted eating is a stressor on the body, how do we justify someone doing AIP if they're already under a lot of stress? It's a good one for us coaches to think about. Are we asking people to make stuff worse by suggesting AIP to them?
Laura Morrow (01:00:17):
And actually, to be honest, if somebody is under a lot of stress, a lot of times I don't necessarily go with AIP right away when I am working with them. I work with people in three or six month packages. I don't just do one call. So I have time to help them transition to that. And so a lot of times a client that I'm working with right now is under a high level of stress. So what we talked about first is adding some foods to her diet and just like those foods that I talked about earlier, what foods are really going to support her body and help regulate her stress and help her get through this stressful time. So adding the vegetables and some of the fruits and the protein and the healthy fats, adding that to her diet. And she felt like that was very doable.
(01:01:10):
She liked a lot of those foods and she was really excited to add those to her diet. And then we're going to work about taking out, first of all, some of the just straight up junk food in the beginning and then removing some things as she is getting more of a handle on her health and feeling better. So that's a lot of times the process of I do it, and that feels just very supportive and healing to people. The other thing is for me personally, I was under a huge amount of stress. I was exhausted. I was in a lot of pain, but what I was ready to feel better and I wanted to feel better fast and I was willing to do whatever it took. So I took about a week to prepare myself to buy food, to get recipes, and I did AIP. And within three and a half weeks I was feeling so tremendously better. I had more energy, less pain, less headaches. I was losing weight, all these things that I had less stress because I was feeling so much better. So going with somebody's personality and what feels good to them makes a lot of difference. But sometimes doing AIP just right off the bat can actually help them be less stressed.
Jaime Hartman (01:02:32):
And then these questions are out of order. Sorry, I was copy and pasting them wrong. We're going to go to Natalie's question next, and Sybil's going to answer that one. And that is how to recalibrate my stress sensor. As many people are telling her she's stressed, she must be stressed, but she doesn't feel it.
Sybil Cooper (01:02:52):
So stress is definitely our reaction to a situation. So not everyone is going to react in the same way to the exact same situation. And so what might be stressful to someone else is not necessarily stressful to you. However, we can get used to, as was mentioned in one of the other slides of being in this fight or flight mode. And so our bodies basically living on this cortisol. And I know people, even myself at one point, especially if you're what's called hypoadrenal or your cortisol levels are low, you actually feel better when you engage in, for instance, high intensity interval training because that actually gives you a boost of cortisol. And so engaging in those stressful activities or situations or having very high stress jobs, you think of lawyers and things like that, could actually give you more energy and make you feel better in the short term.
(01:03:56):
And so really I would ask, are you able to go on vacation and really unplug and wind down and be in the moment without feeling depressed? Is your body seeking these adrenaline promoting cortisol promoting activities or situations? And a lot of my clients find it helpful to do a pretty in-depth stress assessment and I forgot to grab the link for that, but we can put it in the email that you'll get following this. And so working through a stress assessment like that can really be enlightening to some people where they think, oh, I might've scored say a five. And they really scored a 15 when they sat down and really thought about the questions and how they feel in that moment.
Jaime Hartman (01:04:56):
Great. And then the final question was from Hillary and I thought I'd just throw that one in there because I think we're all going to agree on the answer here and that she said, I've always tried not to burden anyone with the problems of coping with rheumatoid arthritis. I assume that's her particular diagnosis, but not sure if this is a good strategy. And then she threw in this quote, laugh in the world laughs with you cry and you alone, but is it harmful to keep your problems to yourself? And I can tell you that, I mean, I think all of us can probably relate to this not wanting to burden the people, especially the people that we love, the people we really care about, we don't want to burden them. I mean, it hurts us to see them hurting for us, so we don't want to do that.
(01:05:36):
But at the same time, it is probably a harmful thing. I think the answer to your question in asking that to keep your problems to yourself, maybe you don't burden your family with it, but this is where finding somebody like an AIP Certified Coach or a therapist or a life coach or just somebody who's not going to be burdened, it's their job to help you could be just tremendously helpful for you. So I love that you asked this. Thank you so much Hillary, for getting us to just kind of think about that for a second and have a chance to answer it. We really appreciate it. We are over time, it's four minutes past. I'm a stickler about time. If you know anything about me, I don't like it when I run over or start late or anything. So we are four minutes past time and I apologize for that everybody who stuck with us. Thank you all for attending. Thank you panelists. I saw there were just a ton of generous people sharing tips in the chat, so that's awesome. Thank you so much. We'll send out the recording link in a couple hours and when you go back to the recording and watch it, you can see that chat transcript there as well. So if you missed any of those, that'll be there. Alright, thank you everyone. We'll see you again at our next event. Bye.
Marie-Noelle Marquis (01:06:51):
Welcome back everyone. I hope you enjoyed listening to that conversation and took away one, two, maybe three nuggets about managing stress that you can apply to your life this month, this week, or even today.
Jaime Hartman (01:07:05):
Again, we want to remind you that AIP is a protocol with multiple branches and there are multiple ways to approach it, and we are here to guide you through that process. This podcast is intended to bring you resources so that while you can do AIP on your own, you don't have to do it alone.
Marie-Noelle Marquis (01:07:24):
We'll be back with another episode in two weeks. So make sure you subscribe to the AIP Summit Podcast in your favorite podcast player,
Jaime Hartman (01:07:32):
And if you'd like to leave us a rating and review, it will help others find this podcast where we are committed to helping you use the power of the autoimmune protocol to elevate your wellness journey to new heights. The AIP Summit Podcast is a Gutsy By Nature production. Content presented is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.
