Dr. Doni was interviewed by Sarah B. Thomas on Episode #76 of the Burn Fat and FEAST Podcast, talking about how stress and trauma make us susceptible to most health issues. You can listen to the episode here or in your favorite pod player.

Listen in as we go through the science behind stress and trauma and the remedies for it.   

The Science Behind Stress and Trauma

Our main stress hormones are cortisol and adrenaline and both of them are playing a role. So, this is the science of understanding what are these stress hormones doing, what are they up to, how are they responding and how should they be recovering. It’s not about having zero stress we want an optimal amount of cortisol, not too much and not too little and same with adrenaline, not too much and not too little just the right amount. So, it’s about how do we support our bodies to have an optimal stress response. 

By measuring our adrenaline and cortisol levels in urine and saliva we can actually see our cortisol and adrenaline levels throughout the day. Optimally we would have higher cortisol in the morning, not super high but a little higher to wake us up, and then it should gradually decrease through the day so it’s the lowest at night. This is unique to each person, so we need to look at the test results to determine the right treatment to rebalance cortisol and adrenaline and recover from stress.

How Does Stress and Trauma Show Up

I encourage you to just think to yourself how your body is talking to you. Sometimes we go through life and we stop listening to our bodies. We get so used to not feeling good that we can walk around all day just thinking about not feeling good. So, you have to find a way to deal with it.

The way I do it is I start with energy levels, how is your energy throughout the day, are you tired, are you overstimulated, how was your sleep, are you able to sleep easily and wake up rested, how is your mood, do you feel low mood, anxious, depressed, we also want to look at focus do you feel brain fog, is it difficult to remember things, etc. These are these are all common symptoms. And then the body, this is where stress and trauma can show up like pain, whether it’s head pain or pain anywhere in your body, digestive issues, reproductive issues, etc. These could all be related to current or past stress exposure. 

How Can We Start The Healing Process

Again, we’re not aiming for zero stress. There are some ways we can decrease our stress somewhat with awareness, but I always like to acknowledge that sometimes when you’re in a really overwhelmed stressed state you really feel like you’re you don’t have much room to move.

If you’ve got a stressful job or maybe you’re a parent and you have to take care of your children and your relationship and maybe your parents too, and it’s not like you can just X one of those things off the list. So, we have to learn how to recover while in distress, and I always want to point that out that it’s possible. Anything that I say is possible it’s because I’ve tried it myself and found it to be possible, and I’ve seen my patients do it successfully.

We need to start by helping your body recover and as you recover things start to shift. And we have to take it step by step, little by little and just to know that there’s a doorway you can start to walk through.

To me this process starts with this foundation of what I call C.A.R.E. or we could say Self-C.A.R.E. which is aimed at prioritizing taking care of ourselves so we can recover from stress and trauma and then take better care of others. And so, instead of just taking away the stress we’re going to build your shields to protect you from stress and to build your recovery. In C.A.R.E. The C is for Clean Eating, A is for Adequate Sleep, R for Recovery Activities and E for Exercise.   

We need to find ways to better feed ourselves with natural organic foods, ways to prioritize sleep, ways to do recovery activities like spending time in nature or meditation, and we need to find time to do any type of physical activity that we enjoy. So, it’s always back to developing a mastery of listening to your body and establishing C.A.R.E. which is an essential foundation to successfully recover from stress and trauma. 

If you want to learn more about how to recover from stress and trauma you can listen to the full interview here, in your favorite pod player or in the Burn fat and Feast website.

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