Dr. Doni’s self-CARE stress recovery tips help you incorporate small changes into your daily life to build your resilience to stress & improve your health.
In my last post Dealing With Anxiety Naturally, I spoke about the ways to combat anxiety levels and stress through naturopathic methods. These included addressing the balance of bacteria in your microbiome, checking cortisol levels, and even measuring serotonin and adrenaline levels with a neurotransmitter panel.
All of which are incredibly important.
But what I realized is that we haven’t talked about simple, everyday stress recovery tips – and how they can be integrated with your stress recovery practice. It’s the intentional moments of self-care we implement on a daily basis that lead to the biggest changes. And help us to become more resilient to stress in the long run.
More specifically: Self-CARE.
Introducing Self-Care Into Your Daily Practice
CARE stands for: Clean eating, Adequate sleep, Reducing stress and Exercise
And it doesn’t have to be hard. It’s a quick way to check in with ourselves each day to ensure we’re practicing daily habits that heal and strengthen us.
Here are some some examples of how self CARE can be implemented:
Clean Eating: Choosing organic, whole foods over processed foods. Eliminating sugars and alcohol intake while being mindful of the amount of fruits, vegetables and healthy proteins and fats we eat. It honestly isn’t rocket science—and I think you know that. Include a few extra salads into your weekly menu. Avoid foods that cause reactions in your body. And aim for healthy proteins that will fuel your body such as wild salmon and grilled chicken.
Adequate Sleep: You’ve heard me say it once… and you’ll hear me say it a thousand more times… you need to aim for a MINIMUM of 7.5 hours of sleep each night. So much of the vital stress recovery our body needs happens during those moments of REM and dreaming. If you’re not sleeping well at night, get my FREE Sleep Tips Guide and check out my Natural Insomnia Solutions Book where I guide you through the 12 most common causes for disrupted sleep and how to address them. Sometimes all it takes is small changes to your nighttime routine or environment, and you can quickly fall into a healthy sleep pattern that lasts for the 7.5 (or more!) hours you need each night.
Reducing Stress: I have TONS of posts on different ways we can work together to reduce anxiety and stress—and why you need to make it a priority. Check out this post on meditation and mindfulness, or this post on ways to what to do instead of being hard on yourself, or get my Stress Remedies ebook on Amazon.
Some of my favorites are:
- Gardening
- Ballroom dancing
- Calling a friend
- Drinking a cup of tea
Exercise: Guess what? Exercise looks different for everyone. If you have nightmares about stepping foot in a gym… never aspire to run a marathon… or can’t see yourself in an Orange Theory class—EVER… then that’s perfectly fine. You don’t need to run 5 miles a day or lift weights… unless that’s what works for you. Ultimately, it’s about finding ways to move your body that make sense for you. What can you start TODAY?
Easy ways to include movement in your day:
- Go for a walk (with your dog if you have one)
- Take a dance class
- Run around the park with your kids
- Skip the elevator and take the stairs instead
- Do some yoga or pilates
- Go for a swim
The goal (and I suggest working up to this) is to move your body (and get your heart pumping) for 30 minutes a day, a few days a week. And I know you can do it!
Taking Control of Stress with Self-CARE
To help you find ways to better introduce these simple practices into your everyday life, I have a FREE video series called the 7-Day Stress Reset. Get that HERE now and start discovering new ways to reduce stress in your life.
Another interesting technique to support stress recovery is through vagal nerve stimulation. The Vagal Nerve is the longest cranial nerve in the body that connects the brain to the rest of the body—especially digestion. It’s the two-way street between the brain and gut.
The Vagal Nerve also supports our parasympathetic nervous system which is responsible for rest and digestion.
The Parasympathetic System is also responsible for:
- Conserving energy
- Slowing the heart rate
- Increasing digestion activity
- Increase in saliva
Ways to support the Vagal Nerve System include:
- Singing
- Humming
- Meditating
- Deep Breathing
Remember, each person is different and what may work for someone practicing stress recovery activities may be different from how YOU practice stress recovery.
The main points to focus on, however, include:
- Getting enough sleep so that you can wake up rested
- Moving your body at some point in the day
- Filling your body with nutrients and whole foods; and
- Building in pockets of time to just be still and relax.
Our bodies are always paying attention to what we’re doing – or not doing. By combining small lifestyle changes with larger health initiatives such as healing leaky gut, checking food sensitivities, or cortisol correction, you can better optimize your health and increase your resilience to stress.
For more information on how I can help you one-on-one with stress recovery, please check out my Adrenal Recovery Program found here.
You can also start by scheduling an initial consult with me to discuss what your particular health goals are and to make a customized plan of action.
As always, I look forward to helping you to live a healthier, happier life!
–Dr. Doni
11th October 2019