Do you feel like your health is spiraling out of control? Are you struggling to manage your stress and feeling overwhelmed?
If so, you're not alone.
Midlife women are under more stress than ever before, and it's taking a toll on our health. From work to family to our social lives, we are constantly juggling and trying to do it all.
But what if there was a way to reset your health and manage your stress? Dr. Doni Wilson is here to help us do just that.
On this episode of the Hormone Prescription Podcast, Dr. Wilson, a Naturopathic Doctor, certified professional midwife, certified nutrition specialist, and bestselling author of Master Your Stress, Reset Your Health, shares her expertise on how to master your stress and reset your health. She offers practical tips and advice on how to make small changes in your life that can have a big impact on your overall health.
For more than 22 years, she has helped thousands of patients overcome health challenges and achieve wellness by using specific strategies that address the whole body and ultimately resolve the underlying causes of distress. Dr. Doni suffered from migraines for over 20 years, and in the process of solving them, she developed her Stress Recovery Protocol.
Dr. Doni brings awareness to the impact of stress on our health and how it is possible to recover from burnout and become resilient to stress in the media and at public and professional events. You can find her blog, podcast, called How Humans Heal, and her Self C.A.R.E.™ program at DoctorDoni.com
In this episode, you'll learn:
How to recover from burnout and become resilient to stress
The connection between stress and hormone imbalances
Why it's important to get to the root cause of your health problems
The different types of stress
How stress affects our genetic expression
The CARE method of stress recovery
How hormones and neurotransmitters influence our stress response
And much more!
If you're ready to make some changes in your life and take control of your health, this episode is for you. Tune in now and learn how to master your stress and reset your health with Dr. Doni Wilson.
(00:00): "You can't pour from an empty cup," says Dr. Doni Wilson. She's gonna teach you how to master your stress to reset your health in today's podcast.
(00:10): So the big question is how do women over 40, like us keep weight off, have great energy balance. Our hormones in our moods feel sexy and confident and master midlife. If you're like most of us, you are not getting the answers you need and remain confused and pretty hopeless to ever feel like yourself. Again. As an OB GYN, I had to discover for myself the truth about what creates a rock, solid metabolism, lasting weight loss, and supercharged energy. After 40 in order to lose a hundred pounds and fix my fatigue. Now I'm on a mission. This podcast is designed to share the natural tools you need for impactful results. And to give you clarity on the answers to your midlife metabolism challenges, join me for tangible natural strategies to crush the hormone imbalances you are facing and help you get unstuck from the sidelines of life. My name is Dr. Kyrin. Dunston welcome to the hormone prescription podcast.
(01:04): Hi everybody. And welcome back to the hormone prescription with Dr. Kyrin. Thanks so much for joining me today, where we're gonna talk about mastering your stress to reset your health with Dr. Doni Wilson. It's so true that you can't pour from an empty cup. It's so much of, many of us are living our lives at midlife from an empty cup, wondering why we feel terrible. And our health is tanking. While Dr. Doni Wilson has cracked the code on mastering your stress, which is the key to reset your health. She's gonna tell you all about it today. She is a naturopathic doctor, certified professional midwife certified nutrition specialist and bestselling offer of master your stress, reset your health. For more than 22 years, she has helped thousands of patients overcome health challenges and achieve wellness by using specific strategies that addressed the whole body and ultimately resolved the underlying causes of distress. She suffered from migraines for over 20 years. And in the process of solving this, she developed her stress recovery protocol. Dr. Doni brings awareness to the impact of stress on our health and how it is possible to recover from burnout and become resilient to stress in the media at public and professional events. You can find her blog podcast called how humans heal and her self C a R E program at Dr. doni.com. Please help me welcome Dr. Doni.
(02:31): Thank you so much for having me. I'm super excited about your book. That's already out faster, your stress reset your health, and we're gonna dive into it. I know people hear so much about stress and we can tend to not pay attention when people are talking about it, but I want everyone to really pay attention because here you have a doctor who specializes the, in this and is saying that this is the thing that you need to do to reset your health. How did you come to this?
(02:58): Understanding? It was through life experience. A lot of it really, you know, like, because I, in addition to going through various stresses of my life, like training to be a naturopathic doctor and a midwife and being a mom and running a practice and running a business, you know, but I think a lot of people go through these stresses, right. But it's just that I came through it also with my own health issues. I had migraines for over 20 years, I was getting migraines and these were migraines that would take me out for days. Like I'd be literally in the bed or on the floor. And I would try different treatments, different medications. I tried acupuncture. I tried herbs, I'm trained as naturopathic doctor. So I was like, I'm willing to try anything. And still it wasn't helping. These migraines would just keep coming. And each time it would knock me down.
(03:49): Like, I'd be like, what else am I supposed to do? I can't, how am I supposed to keep going like this in having these unpredictable migraines happening and no solutions. And I think, you know, that's why I relate to a lot of people out there who maybe that's not migraines. Maybe they have some other health issue where they feel like they've been trying and they just are not getting answers and they're not feeling better. And it's just that in my case, because I, of my training and my interest in understanding the human body and willingness, right. I'm willing to do, if it needs to be a diet change, if it needs to be a supplement, if it, what, if it's a test I need to do, I'm like I'm willing to do it. And so I just kept on working on it and I kind of worked on it in isolation actually, honestly, because I felt too ashamed.
(04:41): I, and I think a lot of people feel this way too, when they have symptoms caused by stress, we feel like we're, it's not supposed to happen. We're supposed to be better than that. Right. We're supposed to be able to charge through life and keep up with everything and it's not supposed to affect us. And so I didn't feel like I could say anything cuz I felt embarrassed. And so instead I just worked on it in isolation. I did along the way I was, I was speaking and I was publishing articles and publishing books and say of everything I learned, right? Like what helped. And there were many things along the way, over the past 20 some years where I was like, well, this dietary change made a difference. This approach made a difference. And every time I found something, I would talk about it that way.
(05:26): But I wouldn't necessarily talk about it from my perspective of having migraines. Right? And so only in the past couple years, because I was still getting the migraines, you know, I maybe saw 10% difference or 20% difference or 50% difference. And I was like, but they're still happening. And it was only just a few years ago that I ended up making a whole bunch of additional changes. And the ever since then the migraine stopped that. And one of the major changes I made is I started talking about it and this is why, you know, I'm here talking with you today about it saying if the more we can actually become aware and talk about how stress is affecting us, that's the first step for changing the whole pattern, right? Like get out of silence about it.
(06:16): When you talk about stress, can you define for everybody what you're talking about? Are you just talking about, I have too many things to do on my to-do list. It's never ending. My family makes me crazy. And life just feels stressful. Or are you talking about something else also?
(06:37): Definitely. And I'm so glad you're asking this question. This is one of the questions that when I'm on an airplane, by the way, the person sitting next to me, this is one of the most common questions they ask me is like, what do you mean by stress? You know, cuz they'll ask me, what do you do? And I say, I specialize in stress and they say, what do you really mean by that? And the thing is is that we like the ones you mentioned. We often think about our day to day, psychological stresses, our deadlines, our financial stresses. And these are definitely stresses that affect us. But that's not the only stresses that affects us in the category of stress. I would also include things like lack of sleep. Like when we, you know, last night yesterday, for example, I had to take an early morning flight.
(07:23): I did not get enough sleep. I'm very aware that that was a stress on my body that I'm gonna need to recover from today. Right? But it's the awareness. This was a stress. Also certain foods can be a stress to us, right? If we are consuming foods that are gonna be inflammatory to our bodies, throw off our blood sugar levels, disrupt or cause leaky gut and disrupt our gut bacteria right now, the food we're eating is actually stressing our system. Or another example is toxins toxins, either in the products we're putting on our skin or on our food as pesticides or in our environment, these toxins are also a stress on our system. And so when we look at it from that perspective, a even a injury can be a stress, right? Or a surgery can be a stress like we know from science it's anything that triggers our stress response and causes our body to need to go into a recovery in order to get back to optimal again.
(08:24): Yes. So I hear you mentioning, it's not just psychosocial and this is what I want everyone to hear because if you only think it's that you'll miss. Yeah. The rest of the iceberg under the ice, <laugh>,
(08:39): It's a big ice for Gunda there for
(08:42): Right. The chemical stressors I heard you mentioned, which could be foods that you're eating, that you think are healthy, but might be causing you a stress response. It, it could be so many things. It could be something in the deodorant that, that you're using. It can be flying in an airplane itself is stressful. Right?
(09:00): <laugh> exactly. And so the key is that because a lot of people will say to me, well, can you teach me how to be stress free? And I say to them, that's not my goal. It would be impossible. First of all, because as humans we're gonna have stress. And in fact, we want to have some stress there's stresses that are good for us. Exercise create is a stress that at a certain quantity is good for us. It helps our bodies to be challenged, to grow muscles, you know, and, and use our heart. It's not about eliminating all stress. Really? The goal is how do we understand where the stress is? So just conversation we're having, how do we notice the stresses that we have in our lives and how do we ensure that we have enough to counterbalance it enough? What I call anti-stress to counterbalance the stress so that our bodies can come back to optimal on a regular basis. It's when we, when we don't have enough, anti-stress we get thrown off, right? I know you're familiar with this where we just get, we get burned out. We get, it becomes normal and familiar to feel constantly stressed.
(10:13): Yes. I love that. It's about having enough anti-stress to counterbalance the stress we have. It's not about teaching people how to be stress free. That is a quotable. I love that. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and Donny, you talk about five different types of stress and that's the first time I've heard that. So I'm super excited for you to talk about that. What are the five types?
(10:37): Okay. So this is based on cortisol and adrenaline levels. So let's, this is understanding the stress response. We have a built in stress response system. We have these stress hormones that communicate stress throughout our bodies. We have cortisol, which a lot of people have heard about cortisol as a stress hormone and adrenaline. We want our cortisol adrenaline. Actually, we don't have enough. That's not good either. We need to have just the right amount at a certain time of day under certain circumstances, right? So we need a Al amount of cortisol adrenaline. And so what happens is when we're under this chronic stress that you and I are talking about, our cortisol and adrenaline levels become disrupted either too high or too low. And it's not the same for everyone, but the treatment is different. So here's the thing is a lot, a big mistake I see often is people,