The Stress Remedy with Dr. Doni Wilson

Dr. Cates:                                 00:06                       Hi Everybody, Dr Trevor cates. Welcome to the spa doctor podcast. I’m so excited to have with me today Dr Donnie Wilson as my guest. We’re gonna be talking about stress and adrenal function and how to balance your adrenals and manage your stress a little bit better. I’m getting ready to do a live event this weekend, a little bit, a little bit stressed about it, so she’s going to give me some personal tip so that so that I can learn and you can learn to. So Johnny, why don’t you start with, tell everybody a little bit about about yourself, your training and where you practice.

Dr. Wilson:                             00:41                       So I go by Dani, Dr Donnie and I’m a nature pathic doctor and I live on long island in practice also in Manhattan and and in Greenwich, Connecticut. So that’s where I live. But I really help people all over the country. I’m, I consider myself an expert in stress and how stress affects us and what we can do to help ourselves stay well even though we’re stressed. Because the thing is is that we know we can’t eliminate all stress. It’s always going to be there in some way. It’s not even good to try to eliminate all stress because stress is good for us, so it’s about how to choose our stress wisely and how to support ourselves so that we can be healthy and happy. Even though we’ve got some stress around. You’re doing this at amazing events. You want to do that. It’s exciting. It’s fun. You’re giving and sharing your knowledge, so you’re going to want that kind of stress. We just gotTa help you get through it in a supportive way.

Dr. Cates:                                 01:37                       Absolutely. Okay. Well, let’s start by talking about what happens when we’re stressed. There’s acute stressors, chronic stress, so what tells the what happens physiologically with the button? Because I think a lot of us who were like, oh, stress management, I mean, whatever. It’s. It’s just, it’s just stress, but it really does impact our body on a big way.

Dr. Wilson:                             01:55                       It really does. You know, I’ve been studying stress and how it affects us for about 20 years and it just became a big interest of mine for several reasons, from stresses in my own life. I found myself after a nature pathic medical school and becoming a midwife, I was completely depleted by stress and so I had to learn how to recover myself and through that have learned how to help thousands of people were covered too. And so what I learned when I looked at the research about stress is that we, our main stress hormone is cortisol and then we also have adrenaline. Both cortisol and adrenaline are made by the adrenal glands and adrenal glands are here above our kidneys. Cortisol is a normal natural hormone which we wanted. We want it to be high in the morning and then gradually decreasing through the day. So it wakes us up in the morning and by the time we’re ready to go to sleep, but it should be low.

Dr. Wilson:                             02:52                       So that’s the normal cortisol and what happens is when we’re stressed, that cortisol response, our bodies, I call it, we have a stress radar. It’s like our bodies are constantly observing our environment, our light, our noises around us, even the toxins, even the foods we eat, everything around us, our body is going to pick up on and it’s gonna shift the cortisol and adrenaline levels appropriately so that we can respond to stress because we want our stress response to help us, right, so that you can be thinking and responding. The problem is when we’re exposed to stress constantly in so many forms, not just emotional stress, but lack of sleep or too much sugar or toxins in our environment or even toxins in our skincare can cause our cortisol and adrenaline to just get out of whack, get out of sync, and so then it starts affecting us in a negative way.

Dr. Cates:                                 03:48                       And what the studies show, and this is how I break it down to keep it simple, is the cortisol effects four major systems in our bodies and it affects our digestion. So a lot of people can relate to that. When you feel really stressed in terms, you’re like you, you feel like you can’t digest your food. You might get reflux, you might get even stomach ulcers because stress makes us not digest very well. The other system that gets affected by stress is our immune system, so a lot of times people get sick, right? When you’re really stressed, you get a cold, you’re like, why did I get a cold? Now it’s because the stress lowers your immunity and you got sick, so stress affects our immune system. The third thing is it affects all the other hormones in our bodies, thyroid, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, insulin, you name it.

Dr. Wilson:                             04:37                       Every hormone is thrown off when the cortisols are off, so to me it’s cortisol is such a central hormone. That means that if we help balance the cortisol, everything else gets better, and before I forget, the fourth system that gets affected is the nervous system. So the nervous system is like mood and focus and energy and sleep. All of our neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine and Gaba. So if stress affects us in those four ways, digestion, immune hormones, and nervous system, it’s no wonder that when we’re stressed, we don’t feel well, right? We start to feel tired all the time. It affects our skin to, of course, because we’re not going to be. Our immune system’s going to be off, our hormones are going to be off or digestion’s off, so sometimes the first place you notice that you’re stressed is because you notice it on your skin. For some people that’s it and maybe Eczema acts up, Rosacea, acne. For some people that’s their first stress signal instead of the digestion. Other people, it’s that they’re not sleeping well or that they’re getting headaches or they’re feeling anxious, but we can look at those symptoms as that’s an indication that stress is starting to affect you. Now we just have to find out what’s happening with your cortisol because it could be too high, it could be too low, that adrenaline could be too high or too low, but we can fix all that. That’s fixable.

Dr. Cates:                                 06:03                       Right? Right. Absolutely. And I, you know, it’s so funny as you were listing all those things, I’m thinking, okay, I can. I can feel that on all of those, all those levels and I have my little tricks. You know, my, my, my meditation, my breath work. I think that there’s a certain amount of stress, and I know this is just a weekend event so it’s not like I’m doing this all the time, but I mean I think that there are things we can do to adjust and adapt so I’ve been doing some of that, but before we go into how to address it, let’s talk about how to test because I think the way you mentioned about Cortisol and that’s very times of the day I think is really important because going in and getting blood work done and just getting cortisol in your blood work isn’t going to give you a ton of information. So explain to people why that is and what’s a better testing option.

Dr. Wilson:                             06:48                       It’s so important. It’s so important and I always recommend this with the people that I work with and in my books as well, is that it’s so important to actually have these levels tested and it’s not something you’re gonna hear about it. The regular doctors appointment, they might test cortisol in the blood, but then it’s only the first, you know, usually the beginning of the day and the blood levels just show you a quick look at your levels. What we want to know is much more fine tuned than that because we want you to feel your best. So we want to know exactly what is your cortisol, not just in the morning but the middle of the day, the evening and your bed time so that we can see is it a little too high, a little too low, a too high, too low. And then I guide people through a process of rebalancing it because we can use nutrients and herbs to do that.

Dr. Wilson:                             07:38                       Plus some of these, uh, sort of stress reducing activities that we can talk more about. Also, there’s a ton of research on the things you can do to help correct your cortisol levels, but once I see those results, it’s going to be a different herb. Like, you know, for a lot of times people will think, okay, I’m stressed, I’m going to go get an adrenal cortisol supportive product. But if you don’t know what your cortisol is, you might be taking the herbs for the wrong situation, you know, if your cortisol’s too high, that’s a different treatment than if your cortisol is too low. So I definitely encourage you to get the test done because making a big difference and I there is also possible to measure adrenaline levels. We can measure adrenaline in urine and by knowing that you can even get that much closer to understanding how stress effects you. I call it your stress fingerprint because the way stress affects each of us is so different. It’s determined partly by our genetics and partly by our stress exposure throughout our lifetime. So it’s really individualized. It’s better to know for you how stress affects you. So then you can give your body the right support.

Dr. Cates:                                 08:46                       Yeah, absolutely. Um, and uh, so with the test, I also noticed that that the blood test that even when I have people do this saliva

Dr. Wilson:                             08:56                       test and that test throughout the day and I haven’t and they’ve already done like the morning blood test, it says it’s normal, it’s normal. Yeah. But the way I think about it is when they’re doing a blood test for cortisol, they’re really looking for is your, is your cortisol way too high or way too low, which is there’s medical conditions called cushing’s Addison’s. So that’s important information, but you might not have cushing’s or Addison’s and still not have optimal cortisol. And so with your saying, yeah, when we test it throughout the day we either use saliva or urine and though because those are easier to collect and multiple times a day and so we can really see and we’re really using it as an optimization of health versus trying to diagnose cushing’s or Addison’s disease. Right. And so what we want is more optimal levels. Like you said, you want it to be higher cortisol to be higher in the morning and then lower at night.

09:51                       And so I think that there are certain signs that people might be really looking for to know if they, they should test, right. What are, what are some signs that, that the adrenals are out of balance at that cortisol, either too high or too low. They, the three symptoms areas that I see most common, um, uh, first one is anxiety. So if you’re, it’s really common to start to feel like you’re just anxious all day or your mind is racing when you’re trying to go to sleep. That anxiousness can tell you that the court has all could be off and we should do these kinds of tests. The second one is if your sleep is off, like if you find you’re awake at night and it’s hard to fall asleep or you’re waking up through the night, that’s another sign that your cortisol could be off.

10:36                       And then the third is fatigue. If you’re waking up tired or you’re tired partway through the day or you’re tired all day long. So if, if you’re, especially if you’re noticing any of those three for sure, get a tested. But as I said, it, it, it might not show those ways. You might just show in your skin. It might just, you just. Some people will say to me, I just don’t feel myself right. And then there’s also the weight gain to aids around the midsection. It definitely. And that’s more in people because some people, they just drink more coffee, right? And then they’ll take sleep meds and so they’re just powering through it. Yeah. And so then what they notice is the skin stuff and wait for, from what I noticed so that you can see, see me for that. Right. So they compensate you for that.

11:22                       Um, so what, what, explain why that happens. Um, and I think it’s a really good point that we’re kind of taught to try to push through our stress, you know, like to be sort of superheroes to stress as if, and try to be invincible to stress, but the fact is we live in human bodies and our bodies or we don’t, we’re not going to be invincible. We need to accept that and, and really learned to be, I call it resiliency to stress. So in my new book, this dress, what you’re. I talk a lot about how to create resiliency, distress and um, and part of that is just knowing how stress affects you and then being able to help. And I’m from there. But um, I see what you’re asking me. Well explained it like for skin inflammation, I think the cortisone triggers inflammation. It also triggers the hormonal imbalances that goes into the digestion.

12:15                       All and all of those things are big root causes behind skin issues, but really a big part of it is the pro inflammatory response. So I call that stagnation, that inflammation that shows. I love it. I love it. It’s so true. You know, Cortisol, I think it increases inflammation for several reasons. I mean by the time it throws off our digestion, then we start being more reactive to our foods, which is more likely to create inflammation. It cortisol throws, it makes our insulin not work well, so then our blood sugar is higher and that creates more inflammation and weight gain and, and so yeah, it’s, I think that, you know, the way you’re saying that is very true, that it’s no wonder that we see inflammation in our skin and weight gain and, and we’re, we should be thinking, okay, what’s my ct is all up to you?

13:03                       Because that means that if we correct the cortisol, I call it multitasking, we can actually start solving the weight and solving the skin and solving the digestion and everything else just by addressing the cortisone, and this is going back to addressing the root cause, right? It’s nature. Pathic physicians, we strongly believe in addressing the root cause rather than using a bandaid approach and covering up suppressing symptoms, trying to find out what’s going on. Because when you find out those root causes and you address those, then you could help the body in so many ways rather than just getting rid of one symptom, you can. You can help support the body and this is also about longevity and little say and to changing our genetic expression. It’s so true. By the time you corrected your cortisol, maybe at first you’re thinking of your skin and your weight, but by the time you fixed that, you’ve also.

13:52                       You’re also preventing diabetes, heart disease, dementia, and you’re just like you say, longevity. You’re going to live longer because you’re optimizing the hormones that are communicating all over your body. So it’s, to me, it’s, it’s huge. And that’s why I write about and talk about it all the time. Okay. So let’s talk about now, now that we’ve talked about what it is, what, what are the symptoms, how to test for it, how do you address it? Well, I break it down into something I call care or self care, which hopefully makes it easy to remember. Right? So it’s like just remembering to get in your self care, which sometimes is hard because again, we’re taught not to take care of ourselves which was are race through the day and not do self care. But if you think of it as how can I get my self care?

14:36                       So care stands for the C is for clean eating, which of course you love dogmatically meeting. So. So it’s all about the clean eating that you talk about, the organic foods that choosing foods that are not inflammatory, that don’t disrupt your blood sugar, that just healthy whole foods that help our body stay healthy. So that kind of clean eating. I don’t know if you want to say if you have other, you’re clean plate, part of the clean skin from within for sure. You go see for clean plate though for that. And then the a is for adequate sleep. So it’s amazing how we, when we get enough sleep, that’s our stress recovery time. So I, I’m one who, um, I tend to put a lot of things on my to do list and so sometimes I think, oh, but sleep, I’m doing nothing. I can’t, I don’t have time to do nothing.

15:29                       But what I really learned when I researched streets, sleep because I just wrote a book called the natural insomnia solution. And when I researched sleep I saw how much our bodies are actually doing while we sleep. So try to shift that mindset about sleep and remind yourself how you have to get in bed and try to sleep at least seven and a half hours because your body has a lot to do is got it, does a whole brain cleanout and it also helps skin directly. But that’s when we get our stress recovery. So out of a sleep issue of asked for a and then the are in care is for reducing stress, so bringing in stress, reducing activities and I encourage you to choose activities that you already enjoy. There may be things you do already automatically if it’s taking your dog for a walk.

16:16                       Like I know we did that this morning, you know, and spending time with animals is known to help with stress recovery and exercise is known for to help. Um, so his gardening, journaling, listening to music, these, all these things that sometimes we feel like we don’t have time for. But actually we are, they’re essential. And so if you haven’t been having time for these stress reducing activities, I encourage you to even just start by putting a reminder in, in either your phone or your watch that says to you, even every hour stand up, take a walk around, take a few deep breaths. It’s just sort of you have to teach yourself to build in that stress, reducing time. And I may start with a minute of every hour and then you might be able to actually schedule it in as like, Hey, I’m going to get up and take a half hour walk.

17:09                       I’m going to do meditation for 10 minutes, you know, or whatever that activity is that either you’re curious about or that you enjoy bringing those into your day to day experience and eat. We eat for care is exercise, so you know, whatever that is for you. Now, if you’re just starting off, start slow. You don’t have to be running five miles or anything like that. Start with five minutes and that could be just stretching. It could be taking a walk. It could be learning something. My favorite is [inaudible] as I was saying to you how much I’m loving, but find exercise or a variety of different exercises that help because we know that exercise can help with stress recovery. Just don’t overdo it because too much stress, like most anything, if we do too much, it can become a stress. So it’s a matter of what’s the right amount of exercise for you.

18:02                       So there you go, care clean. Eating adequate sleep, reducing stress activities and exercise. Okay. What can you give us a sub sleep tips because that is a tricky thing. I mean I, I woke up last night, go out. I don’t usually have difficulty sleeping, but I woke up facing thoughts, oh my gosh, I’ve got to do this and Oh, I don’t want to forget. I’ve got to call this person and I got to remind this person or this, I’ve got to bring this thing. So that’s your stress off to you. So it could have been cortisol up, it could have been adrenaline up, you know, they both legs and that’s when. So then you just kind of first off is just realizing that take a breath and accept, okay, this is, this is my body. It’s trying to help me with the stress that’s going on.

18:43                       So certainly then you can do some things like. Because I think once we have an awareness we can kind of set it aside a little bit instead of it completely overwhelming us because sometimes then if you wake up in the night, the tendency is then to stress about not sleeping. Yeah. Then you’re like, oh my gosh, I got to sleep and now my goal is to try to catch yourself first and say, okay, this makes sense. So then you could take a few deep breaths. I would probably get up and maybe even go get a little protein to eat because when you’re more stressed you might be burning through your calories faster. So you might need to go, like get a little protein shake and maybe take. You could take a supplement that helps with calming your nervous system and your cortisol. And I took some Melatonin last night so she took some Melatonin.

19:27                       So it’s kind of help her body remind your body that it’s time to sleep. Um, I might take some Gabba supportive, you know, either cme or there’s some other supplements that help support Gabba. Gabba is our, I call it our stress buffer. If we don’t have enough Gabba, we don’t have enough buffer to stress. And the stress starts affecting us more so we can support the Gabba certainly with stress producing activities, but also with things like CNN will be tyrek acid or they’re also are supplements that actually contain Gaba. And so you can go take that and give yourself some stress, some buffer to the stress. Um, I might also take some five htp because it supports serotonin and, um, or a product that has all of those in one, um, that like, uh, one of my sleep support products has those elements. You just go, Hey, let me just support me to do this weekend.

20:26                       Yay. Okay, great. All right. So when it comes to adrenals, what are some of the nutrients and herbs you think are particularly helpful for, for supporting the adrenal function? Okay. So in my, um, I’m calling the stress warrior program or Stress Recovery Program. Um, it’s, I think of it in three phases. So the first phase is to remove whatever stresses we can. So we’ve talked about that, removing schools that we can, trying to decrease whatever stresses you can, but except there’s gonna be some stress. Step two is what you’re referring to, which is let’s rebalance and to restore so we gotta get our cortisol back to where we want it. Now, if you, if you have high cortisol, like say at night, your cortisol’s high when it should be low, I will be thinking of first nutrient would be phosphide, subtle searing because faster. There’s a lot of research to show how subtle searing can help drop the cortisol levels helps.

21:24                       It basically helps you remind your brain that doesn’t need to be making so much cortisol and then there’s a lot of herbs to choose from. There’s Ashwagandha, there’s an herb called Banaba leaf, and there’s also magnolia route, so you. I usually start with one and just see what works best for you. So if you know, you might want to go through a couple of different herbs and combinations until you find, hey, this actually is helping. My ct is all calmed down. Once we get you out of stress mode, I call that stress mode. When you’re like, you know, the adrenaline’s going and cortisol is going and you’re just like, ah, buzzing. Once we get out of stress mode and then we can do the stress recovery of cortisol, if it’s too low in the morning when it should be high, then we want to use, we call them adaptogenic herbs are herbs that help get the cortisol back to optimal and those might be herbs like licorice, Rhodiola, holy basil.

22:22                       These are herbs that can help boost your great help your adrenal glands make more cortisol again, because we’d rather, if we can support our bodies to do it themselves. I mean there are options where you can get actual formulas that have either glandular adrenal or cortisol in them. So that’s a possibility if we really need to fill in for your adrenals. But my first preference is let’s try herbal approaches and nutrients first. The nutrients that help the cortisol would be the b vitamins, vitamin C, um, you know, so you, you often will see those in an adrenal formula that are gonna help your adrenals do their job right and make the cortisol again. And then there are other, there are other herbs and nutrients to help lower high cortisol levels, right? Yeah. There are so many, there really are there and it’s, it’s amazing when you think about it, how here we are using nature to actually correct our cortisol levels.

23:16                       What are some of your favorites that you’re thinking? Well, you know, there’s one supplement that I, that I oftentimes will take if I feel like my cortisol levels are up too high. That’s cortisol manager. Yeah. I know there are a lot of great nutrients and, and it has a foster digital searing and it has magnolia road and, and so those are the ones that help just tell your brain, okay, you don’t need to make so much cortisol right now. Calm down, get out of stress mode. So you might use cortisol manager in the bedtime and then if you have low cortisol in the morning, you might use a completely different set of herbs, you know, the b vitamins, vitamin C, maybe Rhodiola and um, and you know, to support the cortisol in the morning. So it’s. Yeah, but it’s doable once you know what you need to do.

23:58                       But I wouldn’t assume because some people have a high cortisol in the morning. So what are the things I noticed was with my patients is that some people there are, when you test, some people you know are just barely starting to shift so maybe their cortisol is down a little bit there, you know, there it’s sort of like a show usually on a graph, at least one test that I use. So there’s this graph and like so it’s supposed to be high in the morning and then it starts to get lower and lower as you get throughout the day. And then so some people that it’s just, it just sort of everything just sort of shifts like yeah. So it’s a little bit lower than everything just kind of was more of a gradual, just like a flat line. And then there are some people that are completely flat and then some people are actually opposite and so they’re completely low cortisol in the morning and then their bodies making it high at night.

24:46                       I was so curious about this awhile back that I did a study of 127, mostly women and because I was like, is there, is there just like three or four possibilities. And actually when I did this study of 127 lemon, there was like 28 different than they could be. Awesome. This is so interesting. So that’s when I said we can’t just guess we have to test it because otherwise you don’t know. And then you have at your fingertips disability to really get yours right where you want it. Yeah, that’s true. That’s true. And you can go somewhat based upon symptoms and then there are some herbs that are adaptogenic like you said, so they can kind of hope adjust either way, but to really get the best results as best to test. So to do that then looking for a nature pathic physician or functional medicine doctor who can do these specialty labs is not something that most mds will be able to, to run because it’s something you have to do a test of your collected at home and send it in.

25:50                       And um, and then the doctor gets the results, so yeah, make sure you ask before you go and see somebody for this because it’s, um, it is a specialty lab. It is, and it’s a spit you, they usually want someone who’s been working with this for awhile because it then they can really guide you carefully. But what I find is when we do this, when patients start to see the results and they see the difference, when they address it, you start to learn your body. You start to learn what is my stress type? What’s my stress fingerprint? How can I just know if I’m have a big stress going on, here’s what I need to do to get back to balance. And that’s about this resiliency becoming what I call becoming a stress Moyer. You become this person who’s able to say stay healthy and bounce back from stress quickly and, and, and, you know, be able to enjoy everything that you want to be able to do and feel good.

26:42                       Absolutely. So a little breathing exercise to lead us through a little something. Okay, let’s do it. I can, you guys can use this right now. I’ve got one eye that’s open all the way because he’s so tired. Okay. And then like you’re seeing us do kind of sit up, sit up in your chair and put your feet on the floor and you can close your eyes, eyes if you want. And, and yeah, this is something you can do anytime, anywhere really. Um, so. And you can just, I think a lot of this is just kind of getting back connected with your body. So much of the time we’re thinking of a million things. So just bring your thoughts to your awareness of your breath so you can breathe in and kind of get a feel for that, feeling your chest expanding and then you can then just let it go and breathe out.

27:37                       Get that at first death feeling and maybe the second time when you breathe in, even feel your chest expanding. Feel you’ve might’ve feel your breath coming into your belly and you didn’t. You couldn’t even hold it at the full breath for a second if you feel comfortable with that. And then gradually let it exhale. And let the breath come out and you feel, feel how that feels in your body and you start to, if you notice thoughts coming in, just a let them go. Just go, oh, that’s interesting. Their goals and focus back to your breath. How does that feel with a breath is coming in and feeling your body. You’re bringing in this oxygen, you’re bringing in this calmness and then you’re breathing out. As you breathe out, you can even think of letting things go, feeling like you’re just present with your body and you can even start to become more aware of other parts of your body. How do your. How do you feel with your feet on the floor and as you continue doing the breathing in and out, how does it feel if it was here in your legs and you’re in the middle part of your body as you breathe in.

28:53                       How do your arms feel? And even thinking of your neck and your head feeling light, feeling calmness.

Dr. Cates:                                 29:06                       Hm.

Speaker 2:                               29:07                       And you can make it sound of you like sometimes that helps save and just, ah, let’s let it go. Highly forget to breathe. And I love it. You’re stretching your neck. Anything it makes me think of like when I get back in touch with my body, I’m like, oh, I feel some tightness here. So and stretching to get a massage on Monday. Yeah, and you and you. It’s amazing how even that short period of time, you create so much more awareness for yourself. It’s called, we call it mindfulness. It’s a form of mindfulness. You’re becoming mindful of your own body in your own self and what the studies show is. Even if you do that for a minute that we did, it actually helps increase your productivity, your focus, your energy. So notice now that you’ve done it, how you feel going forward and see if you want to bring that into your day more often.

Dr. Wilson:                             30:02                       Thank you, Dani. Welcome. Alright, Dr Donnie, tell everybody where they can find. You can find out more about you. Okay. Well you can. You can go to just d, r, d, O n.com. That’s my website is Dr Donny Dot com, but I also have a special page. It’s the stress lawyer Book Dot Com. And stress stressful. Your Book Dot Com, you can get a copy of the stress your book for free. It’s my gift for you and you can also get my seven day stress reset for free, so I will guide you each day. So you have a video series where I help you implement care activities. So please join me over there. I’d love to. I’d love to have you come. All right, great. Thank you for that.

Dr. Cates:                                 30:46                       And so well thank you so much for coming on today, Tony. Just being here in person and this is for, for my event. This is great. So we’ll have those links to Dr. Donnie’s website and what she just talked about. What health is links at the SPA Dr. Com. Just go to the podcast page with her interview and you’ll find all the information and links there while you’re there. Invite you to join the spa doctor community so you don’t miss diva coming shows and if you haven’t taken the skin quiz, yeah, you can go to these skin quiz.com. Find out what your skin might be trying to tell you about your health. Maybe there’s stress involved in that, so just go to [inaudible] dot com. Also invite you to join me on social media, on facebook, pinterest, twitter, instagram, and Youtube, and join the conversation and I’ll see you next time on the spot after podcast. Yeah.