Stress Episode Transcriptions

Kick It Naturally – Stress

You can listen to this episode HERE.

Disclaimer

T.C. Hale is not a doctor and does not claim to be a doctor, licensed in any type of medical field. Don’t be an idiot and use anything heard on this show as medical advice. This information should be used for educational purposes only and you should contact your doctor for any medical advice. Now get off me.

Kinna: Welcome to Kick it Naturally. I’m Kinna McInroe and I’m here with T.C. Hale, author, natural health expert, Moses, uh…

Will: Fancy pants.

Kinna: Fancy pants.

Tony: Moses is a fancy pants so maybe that’s what she meant. I don’t know.

Kinna: I don’t know. It just came to the top of my head.

Tony: It was a weird thing at the top of your head.

Kinna: It was a weird thing at the top of my head.

Will: This is not related to the show.

Kinna: I was, yeah, yeah. That’s weird. I was, I had Noah on the brain because I saw that, that big billboard for the movie, for the trailer, but then I don’t know Moses came out.

Will: Oh yeah. The billboard.

Kinna: Anyways and we also have the Hottey Pottoty, Will Schmidt over there. Hi.

Will: Hi.

Kinna: He’s just sitting over there with a couple of fig leaves.

Tony: Hi, Will.

Kinna: That’s about it.

Will: Hey there.

Kinna: Today’s show is brought to you by Audible.com.

Tony: Audible.com!

Kinna: Woohoo! Get a free audio book download and 30 day free trial at kickitinthenuts.com/audiobook. Over 150,000 titles to choose from for your iphone, android, kindle, or MP3 player. And every time we say Audible.com we get $100.

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Kinna: So today our topic is stress. And I know that I’m a ball of stress right now.

Tony: Freaking out!

Kinna: Yeah.

Tony: Simmer down.

Kinna: It was, it was all stressful today.

Tony: So this is the solution, the whole show today is simmer down.

Kinna: Simmer down. That, you know that’s easier said than done and in my mind I can talk myself out of things. But in that moment I just you know, I go to the worst case scenario, I stress out, yeah.

Tony: Yeah.

Kinna: I don’t know.

Tony: That’s good times. We’ll talk about that some today.

Kinna: Okay.

Tony: And so what we’ll…

Kinna: This is gonna be therapy for me.

Tony: It will be. This will just be about getting Kinna to simma down.

Kinna: Exactly.

Tony: And what, we’ll talk about like not only the affects that stress can have on the body so people understand you know what’s going on.

Kinna: And your friends and family.

Tony: And the, the, the…huh?

Kinna: Your stress can have on your friends and family.

Tony: Right.

Kinna: And their bodies.

Will: How you’re a liability.

Kinna: And they’re mental. You create stress for everybody.

Will: You’re making it all worse.

Tony: Yeah. Thanks for showing up. But we’ll also look at you know how to reduce stress or how to look at physiological aspects of your body…

Kinna: That was easy for you to say.

Tony: Physiological aspects of your body to figure out if maybe they are compounding your stress or magnifying it and if there’s things you can do to help you simmer down. Cause life is gonna happen, we’re gonna have life.

Kinna: Yeah, unfortunate. Yeah.

Tony: But some people can handle that stress of life better than others can. So we want to talk about helping those.

Kinna: I have a feeling it’s all gonna go back to digestion.

Will: You think?

Kinna: Like every single one of these podcasts it’s probably…

Tony: It won’t all, but there’ll be some digestion in there for sure.

Kinna: Oh, okay. Okay.

Tony: For sure we will.

Kinna: So if you haven’t already liked us on Facebook, now is the time to do it. Just pull your car over or whatever you’re doing, put us on pause and go to Kick it in the Nuts on Facebook and we will post topics that we’ll be doing on future shows. And you guys can post any questions you want us to cover in the show. And we’ll get to it. Don’t stress out.

Tony: Yeah. We just passed 60,000 fans so if you haven’t liked us yet who, who are you? I mean there’s not very many people left. There’s only like 12 people left that haven’t liked us on Facebook.

Kinna: Whoa. We’re big stuff. In this world, this entire world.

Will: Right.

Tony: It’s weird.

Kinna: It’s cool.

Tony: Yeah.

Will: They’re just rebels.

Tony: So let’s look at stress a little bit and I’ll have Will talk about some of the, the sciencey stuff behind it too. But first of all let’s, let’s look at what stress can do to you as a human body, you know things that can occur so that people understand that you know, you always hear “you gotta reduce your stress to improve your health.” But, but we never understand really why that is. We just hear it. Just one of those things we hear and we’re like “alright.” But if you don’t understand what’s going on then you don’t really have a reason to really put any effort in to reducing your stress.

Kinna: Will just looked pretty stressed out about that.

Will: Yeah. I mean like what are you going to do? You got, you got kids, you got a job, you can’t…

Kinna: You got bills to pay.

Will: Then you can also look at people that have seemingly really stressful jobs like you know like individuals like Mayor Giuliani or fighter pilots a lot of them have trained themselves to stay calm during like excessively stressful situations.

Tony: Right. Like my dad he was a fighter pilot and I found out that when like if we ran out of applesauce that wasn’t a real big deal to him.

Will: Yeah.

Tony: You know he was okay with that.

Will: Right.

Tony: Just because he had you know so much experience in dealing with that stressful stuff.

Kinna: Well and also I mean you can put things into perspective. Once you’ve like gone and been in an airplane and you’re a fighter pilot as compared to “oh my god we ran out of toilet paper.” You’re like I, you know I pooped in the woods for 12 weeks and ate berries and figs I think I can you know find a rag or sock to wipe with or something. You know?

Tony: Right, right. I can use a hand towel if I’m out of toilet paper.

Will: So just become a fighter pilot.

Kinna: Yeah, exactly. That’s what I’m about to do. I’m leaving right now. I’m going to go enroll.

Tony: That’s the, that’s what we’re learning. So Will talk about some of the things that stress can do to us as, as a person.

Will: Yeah. Well it, it does accelerate aging in that in that it accelerates glycolosis and oxidation.

Kinna: Got my attention.

Will: Because when we’re in a stressed out state our nervous system usually goes into the sympathetic, or flight or fight pattern. And that accelerates energy production because our body trying to deal with a perceived threat or emergency. And that is the opposite of the, the sort of anabolic, restful state, not that we want to be never in the sympathetic state. It’s just if we’re always there we’re always like really, really burning a lot of energy and causing wear and tear at the cellular level. So we don’t want to be stuck in that. And we want to look at different measurements in our body chemistry to help us discern if we are actually stuck in the sympathetic state or not. And you might be because of things going on with your metabolism, the way your body handles carbohydrates. So it’s not just a matter of like your job or your mindset. There’s some real physiological triggers that can put you in this stressed out state as far as your nervous system is concerned.

Tony: Right. So the body’s kinda made to be in both states. Like the parasympathetic state is when we rest and digest. And the sympathetic state is, is called fight or flight. And, and picture like you’re running from a bear, the, the functions of your body will change in this fight or flight state to give you the resources and tools you need to run away from this bear if that’s the proper thing to do. But so you can jack up adrenaline, all kinds of hormones can be going crazy. A lot of stuff can be happening in the body to give you what you need to deal with this current stress because it views the stress as a life threatening situation. But the way we live now today, there’s not a lot of bears. I haven’t seen a bear this week, really. But if there’s traffic and you’re all stressed out to your body that doesn’t, it doesn’t, it’s not viewing it as oh, there’s a Plymouth in front of you. It views it as you’re running from a lion so I need to jack up all these hormones and do all these things to give you what you need to run away from this lion. And, and doing all that stuff in your body doesn’t help you get through traffic in any way.

Will: No.

Tony: But it’s just the response that is, is built into the body and so that’s how it works.

Will: Yeah. So that’s, that’s one of the reasons why we can be in this accelerated aging state from that sympathetic pattern but other real causes of stress at the biochemical level can be, if your electrolyte levels are off that can make your body kind of freak out cause it doesn’t want to get a seizure if your electrolytes get too low or a heart attack if your electrolytes get too high. And you can also be in an overly anabolic state where your body’s creating energy in a dirty way where it’s producing a lot of lactic acid and that can as you’ve said in past episodes trigger a panic attack from the lactic acid. And you can also be in like an overly alkaline or an overly acidic state for different reasons and that can also make you panic because your blood oxygen levels are hard to stabilize when that’s going on.

Tony: Right. So when something in the body is, is out of whack a little bit you know that’s a concern to the body. The body wants things to be balanced and homeostasis and everything working jazzy. So when things go out of whack a little bit that’s stressful to the body so we can feel that stress and then in our minds we’re thinking “oh why am I stressed. I must be stressed because I haven’t vacuumed in a week. You know we make up something and we find a reason to be stressed about. But the actual stress is that, that the body is feeling the stress. You have a question about vacuuming?

Kinna: I was going to say something. I was going to say cause when you said that about the anabolic, or the overly anabolic or electrolyte deficient cause I was thinking well what about people who are like anabolic and stuff. And that makes sense. Maybe you’re doing, you making yourself stressed out so that you’re like, have some energy or?

Will: Well when you’re in the anabolic imbalance your cells are not permeable enough to allow for sufficient oxygen flow into the cells. But they still need to make energy, ATP. And they’ll do that…

Kinna: Oh ATP, okay.

Will: Yeah. So they’ll do that in a way that is called through anaerobic fermentation where instead of just creating ATP, and CO2, and H2O they’re also producing lactic acid which can make you freak out.

Tony: And we’ve talked about this a little bit before and I, and I, I’m going to come back to another thing of your question when we haven somebody else’s question that I saw that they asked cause it goes in with that. But you know I think we’ve talked about this before where think about like you’re trying to pay $900 worth of bills with $18. It’s, it’s stressful. So if resources are low in the body and the body needs all these resources for all these functions but you got $18, you know the body is going to feel stressed. And that stress can translate to how you’re feeling.

Kinna: Cool. So I always have a get out of jail free card with stress and, and bitchiness.

Tony: Yeah. You just, right. Just use that.

Kinna: I’m deficient right now.

Tony: And, and that is a stress to the body is “I don’t, I need more stuff.” So a lot of times if people can look at their own physiology, look at their blood pressure and if it’s really low then that’s a good sign that minerals are low and if, if they lift those minerals all the sudden they can feel a whole lot better.

Will: So if you’re sitting there listening trying to figure out “well what is it for me? Is it my electrolyte levels, am I too anabolic, or am I a slow oxidizer and is that causing me to be stuck in a sympathetic state, or am I just in the sympathetic state?”

Tony: Or is my six year old just really annoying and freaking me out?

Will: Yeah. Do I need to shoot my dog?

Kinna: Do I need to get a divorce?

Will: Right. All these things. Whatever that is. As far as the biochemical markers are you can go to my most recent blog post on mybodyofknowledge.net and check out the one that says “Stress and Meditation.” There’s a little box under the categories on the right.

Kinna: Oh the blog post where you have the picture of you naked?

Will: I’m not naked.

Tony: But you are in Kinna’s mind.

Will: Okay.

Kinna: I’m trying to get you some hits, okay?

Will: Something like that… But in that blog post there’s a little video where I’m talking about these different potential causes as well as some instructions on how to meditate. But beneath that written out there’s all the different self tests that you can do to help discern what’s off in your chemistry related to this particular aspect. So you might want to check that out at mybodyofknowledge.net.

Tony: Right. And so we’ll talk about ways that you can you know like meditation that you can use to de-stress yourself, to knock yourself down a little bit so you’re not so wired out. I just made up that phrase “wired out.” Does that mean something? I don’t, I don’t think it does.

Kinna: Yeah. I think so.

Tony: But then if you also look at your physiology you may find ways to help your body relax a little bit more so it’s easier for you to de-stress as well. So you can go at it from different angles and figure out what works best for you or maybe you need a combination of both things.

Will: Yeah. And I would totally recommend looking at it cause it can be both. Like I’ve had lots of clients that have come to me that meditate daily and they’re just always kind of anxious and nervous or in this problem solving state and it’s because of like their metabolism and their pH. It just makes you be in that flight or fight situation whether you’re meditating or not.

Tony: Right. And we’ll talk about some other causes too. Maybe we get into a few questions.

Kinna: I, I still like my options of drinking and eating when I get stressed.

Tony: So cake and beer is like your best de-stresser.

Kinna: Yeah, yeah. That’s the best de-stresser there is. So Chris from Bellingham, Washington, “I’m always looking for healthy long-term strategies for stress…” You okay there Will?

Will: Yeah. I choked on some water. It’s really stressful.

Kinna: Am I going to have to give you the Heimlich maneuver? Okay. I’ll go back. Chris from Bellingham, Washington, “I’m always looking for healthy long-term strategies for stress management. This should be a core part of out curriculum in schools. You should not be able to receive a high school diploma unless you can prove you can cope with stress safely and effectively.” I agree.

Tony: That’s kinda a good idea.

Kinna: That and also like how to you know use charge cards and like finances and stuff.

Tony: Right. And also they should teach how not to drive slow in the left lane.

Kinna: Exactly.

Tony: If they taught those three things this world would be a whole lot better.

Kinna: Yeah. Exactly.

Will: Or like teach them how to text and drive. Like you’re going to do it anyway. Like maybe we can just work on strategy.

Tony: Practicing.

Kinna: How to drive with your knees while you text 101.

Tony: But uh, so Will do you want to talk a little bit about meditation and, and ways people can use that if they’ve never done that? A lot of people hear that and they think “well I’m not a guru.”

Kinna: Airy, fairy, artsy, fartsy, hippie, dippie.

Tony: Right. Yeah, yeah. So maybe, maybe make it to a, in a manner that somebody could use it that’s never tried it.

Will: Yeah, sure. So I do have this on that blog post there’s a little video if you forget how to do this, what I’m about to say. But I have taken different classes in Vedic meditation, which is pretty much exactly the same thing as transcendental meditation. But transcendental meditation’s like trademarked.

Tony: There both the same thing cause people don’t know what either of them are. Is that why?

Will: Yeah.

Kinna: It’s transcendental Greek to me!

Will: But if you, if you go to a transcendental meditation class it’s going to be very expensive cause it’s trademarked and they have this whole thing. But if you look up some of the other links like the teachers that taught me, these guys Will Dalton and Lane Watkins. They teach Vedic meditations and they have a lot of great stuff online. There’s links to their stuff on the blog post. But the essence of Vedic meditation is a simple mantra. So something like a meaningless sound, this primordial sort of like, you can use “omm.”

Tony: So Kinna meditates all day long. She’s always making meaningless sounds.

Will: Yeah, just the constant internal dialogue. Right. So and the whole thing about it is that people think that they’re better at meditation when they’re able to really focus on the mantra. But that’s not what it’s about. Just sitting down, what’s recommended usually is like 20 minutes twice a day or something like it. Any bit that you can do can help. So don’t feel bad if you can’t do that much. But you’re just trying to gently focus on the mantra and you’re gonna get a bunch of like cluttered thoughts, just regurgitations of you know the 80% of thoughts that you have everyday all day.

Tony: Right, right.

Will: They’re gonna regurgitate and just like fill up the airspace. And the whole technique is just to whenever you realize that you’re not thinking of the mantra just start thinking the mantra again. And those simple like thoughts are going to get their air time and kinda like play out and they’ll start to loose their trigger. Like what they normally make you think about and just run away with your, your train of thought. Just returning to that simple mantra will help you get more centered and it’ll help shift your nervous system. So don’t make it a goal to be like really good at focusing on the mantra. Know that like it’s kinda like a detox. Like your, your, just like your bile’s sending toxins out. When you’re sitting there focusing on the mantra and all those mental clutter thoughts come up. That’s fine. Just go back to the mantra and sometimes you’ll have these really, really euphoric, peaceful semi-conscious states where maybe you see things or you feel this incredible like rush of energy or whatever it is. And that’s awesome, but it’s not the goal of meditation.

Tony: You don’t have to do that.

Will: You don’t have to get there.

Kinna: You can get the same effect with acid.

Will: Yeah. It’s much easier. You don’t even have to…

Kinna: Concentrate on a mantra.

Will: Yeah. It’s just harder to find.

Tony: So if I’m trying to focus on the mantra and the thoughts pop into my head of “why don’t I have camouflaged pants? I should get a puppy. Why are there so many Cheese-It’s? It doesn’t mean I failed at it.

Kinna: Squirrel!

Tony: Yeah, squirrel!

Will: Squirrel!

Tony: That just means that I need to just re-group and just kinda go back to what I was doing.

Will: Yeah. And just go back to that. And if you don’t like the idea of like the mantra or like “should I be saying it, should I be humming it,” whatever. You can do an simple thing like just try to focus on your breath going in and out or…

Kinna: That’s what I was gonna ask. I, cause I always thought the meditation was about the focus of the breath and just getting breath going you know to all your cells and your brain and just I don’t know. When I’m like stressed out I just kinda take three deep breaths and I feel better.

Will: Yeah. And that can help. And whether it’s the breath, or looking at a candle, or just watching the trees, or whatever that is…

Kinna: Or cutting.

Will: Cutting?

Tony: But you know, I think one thing to kinda think about when you’re looking at it you know “I’m not hootie tootie, I’m not going to do meditation stuff,” but…Are you looking at my Band-Aid on my finger?

Kinna: Yeah.

Tony: I got a boo-boo.

Kinna: Yeah, yeah.

Will: Cutting…

Tony: I wasn’t cutting.

Kinna: He’s a cutter, he’s a cutter.

Tony: But I was cutting chicken when I did it.

Kinna: That poor chicken.

Tony: Anyways. I know.

Kinna: He’s stressing out the chickens.

Will: That’s really gross.

Tony: But you know think about your stressful thoughts that you have about your job all day. And you it’s just, it’s, it’s this constant onslaught of hormones and things that you’re creating in your body. So if you can take 10 minutes and just remove those thoughts or do what you can to at least reduce those, that’s a nice little break for your body. And it can be helpful in a lot of ways.

Kinna: Tony I was thinking of sending you on a vacation for a while so I could have some stress free life.

Tony: That would be awesome. Yeah, let’s do it.

Will: Chill out. But there’s, there’s some other like really cool, legit, clinically verified benefits of meditating this way. I, I talk about it in the blog post also. But I think it was transcendental meditation like the, the company, the group that funded this or it might have been through Kaiser. I don’t know who did the study but it was a large, someone…

Kinna: Scientology.

Will: Someone, yeah. So there’s like 5,000 people in this study and they had half the group meditate twice a day, 20 minutes for five years. And the other half of the group didn’t. And they, they did two things; one they checked the biological age of their organs at the beginning and the end of the test and then they also gave them what are called tripartite performance test where you look at the efficiency, accuracy, and serenity of the individual performing the test. And they found that people that did meditate consistently were better at all three aspects. Like they could perform a test more efficiently with greater accuracy and being calmer throughout it. Part you know, the controlled factor was cause of the meditation. But they also found that after the five years the retested the biological age of the participants and found that the people that did meditate actually tested one year younger than when they began. Whereas like…

Kinna: And so that was like 6 years.

Will: Yeah. Right.

Kinna: Wow.

Will: Incredible. Then the control group just aged like normal.

Tony: Right. So if you want to learn more about this stuff, you know when we talk about physiology we have a free four-week course on kickitinthenuts.com, a digestion course. You can learn how to run all those tests on yourself. But this blog post of Will’s on My Body of Knowledge is a good way to see, find out a lot more about this kind of stuff to de-stress yourself. Let’s do more questions.

Kinna: Amber from Claire, Michigan, “are stress and anxiety related? I’m stressed right now. I need a hug.” I guess that depends which mother and father the come from. Are they related? Get it?

Tony: Oh, I see. It took me a minute. I’m sorry. I was slow.

Kinna: Ah. That was a good one.

Will: You’re stressing me out.

Kinna: That was really good. Wow.

Tony: They can’t all be winners. It’s okay. You know and I think a lot of people view that as stress and anxiety is the same thing. But it’s really not. And, and we have another episode on anxiety that you can find by searching for Kick It Naturally on iTunes or on Stitcher. And you can listen to that anxiety episode. But maybe Will just give them a, a viewpoint of how sometimes anxiety can be caused by other things.

Will: Yeah. When we, I think one of the main things we really harped on with anxiety was that it’s usually when the persons blood pressure is low or when their blood sugar drops really low. And those are…

Kinna: Why is it always that?

Tony: Just causes a lot of stuff.

Will: Cause people get freaked out, their, their bodies get freaked out that they’re gonna have a seizure. And this ties back to digestion as you waiting for it. Right?

Kinna: Okay.

Will: Cause low blood pressure issues are usually related to not being able to break down proteins and fats well and turn those into blood sugar which is a more stable source of…

Tony: Or pulling minerals out of food even, yeah.

Will: Yeah, right. So they’re mineral deficient, their blood sugar levels are unstable. And that can make them kind of constantly on edge. When we look at stress, there are real world external stressors and all these other markers that we look at like being stuck in the sympathetic state.

Tony: Yeah.

Kinna: I’m always sympathetic towards everybody. I walk around crying all day.

Tony: You’re just a sweetheart.

Kinna: Oh my gosh, look at that sweet person!

Tony: If there’s anything you are it is kind.

Kinna: Ah, no.

Will: Why was that so funny to you?

Kinna: I don’t know. His lip was quivering when he tried to say that without a laugh.

Will: He couldn’t hold eye contact or anything.

Kinna: I can be sweet. I have my moments.

Tony: Yes you can. You’ve had seven of them.

Kinna: Uh huh. In my entire life. Uh Stephanie, “How can I curb stress without slapping the dog BEEP out of someone?” Well if somebody is a human and they have dog poop in them, that’s already a problem right there.

Will: It would be helpful to get it out.

Tony: Stephanie does sound stressed too. But sometimes you just got to slap somebody, Stephanie I think.

Kinna: Yeah, Stephanie I get it. Sometimes I want to stab people in the eyeballs. I have that reoccurring fantasy when I get really stressed out. I don’t do it. I don’t do it, but I think about it.

Tony: That’s good. It’s good to have goals I think.

Kinna: Uh huh. Yeah. I guess that’s when I probably shouldn’t reach. Um Jake from Greenville, South Carolina, “how much stress impact,” wait, let’s go back. “How much does stress impact digestion and your ability to produce stomach acid?”

Tony: It can a lot.

Will: Yeah.

Tony: It can be a really big deal. You know, Will talk about what we need to make stomach acid first of all.

Will: Yeah. Well you need hydrogen and chloride to produce it. When you’re in that anabolic state which has that whole lactic acid inducing situation that can make you stressed out you tend to pee out too much of your chloride so you tent to run short on making your own hydrochloric acid. But yeah when you’re stuck in this sympathetic state whether it’s from your digestion being off or from external stresses your body is not thinking about “okay let’s, let’s make these nutrients into resources and build muscle, and regenerate the cells.” It’s in the “No. Solve the emergency at hand.”

Tony: Right. The bear is coming. We need to put all the resources towards this. And then there’s nothing left for your body to make hydrochloric acid during digestion. It takes a lot of resources to digest, a lot more than we think it does. So if your body is putting, if you’re, if you’re already low on resources and now your body’s other stuff to emergencies that don’t really exist, that’s a problem.

Will: Yeah. And just look at that, that opposite, those names we give them; the flight or fight or rest and digest. So if you’re in one your body’s not prioritizing the other.

Tony: Right.

Kinna: Carol from Park City, Utah, “I feel like I’m stressed all the time and I fly off the handle way too easily. Feels right in the moment but I later wonder why an event bothered me so much. I also get dizzy spells and then I’m stressed for the rest of the day that I’m going to have another dizzy spell. How can I calm down?” I understand Carol.

Will: I love the trembling in her voice.

Tony: That was Kinna’s Oscar clip.

Kinna: Yeah. Exactly.

Tony: Well one, this is, this is the, the girl that I wanted to come back to your question, Kinna. One practitioner explained this to me in a way that really made sense one time. And, and this is not a scientific fact we just see this in practice a lot. That let’s say a person has very low resources. And it’s, they don’t even have the oxygen in their head to function and to think clearly. So what we find that a lot of people do is they will bring all these emotional issues into life so to speak. Maybe you might call him a drama queen if you wanted to but it’s not because that’s how they are. They may be doing that to help themselves function because when you go into this stressed out state of lalalalalala and freaking out about everything now all the sudden you are in the fight or flight state. And now all the sudden your vascular system is more constricted which we know raises your blood pressure and allows resources to be used by the body. So the person could be putting themselves into this drama situation just so they, they can think clearly. Because what happens is people should have a low gear and a regular on, and a high gear. But a lot of people with real low resources they don’t have that “on.” There’s no neutral. They’re either totally high gear on or they’re off. So when a situation presents itself to them they have to find a way to get them into the on, into the high gears so that they can think, and function, and react, and, and make something happen. So if you can Carol first change the way you talk because you just sounded stressed out. Or that was just you doing that.

Kinna: That was just me.

Tony: Okay, okay. You did it so well it was, I felt like it was really Carol. What skills you have.

Kinna: Well Carol and I are soul sisters.

Tony: Right. So but if, if Carol, you know she’s saying that she has dizzy spells. Will, talk about what causes dizzy spells.

Will: Yeah. I mean that goes back to the electrolyte deficient, low blood pressure situation which we talked about can also just cause that constant state of anxiety cause a person doesn’t have resources. And one thing that comes to mind when we’re talking about they’re either “on,” like hyper or hypo. A lot of times people blame the thyroid for that and the endocrine system for malfunctioning when really it’s just the body doesn’t have like the regular resources to just you know function at a normal level. So usually you’ll feel really low energy and lethargic until the body feels like there’s a panic situation and it has to be on and then it’ll throw it into high gear. But it’s not really the thyroids fault. The thyroids just acting like a governor trying to dictate like how hard you’re pushing down the gas pedal because it knows it doesn’t have a lot of resources to go around.

Tony: Right. So if Carol’s able to lift her mineral resources not only could that improve her dizzy spells but it might allow you to not be so affected by things to where you won’t need to stress about something in order to be able to function and think about it.

Kinna: Carol, I’ve gotten really good at apologizing.

Tony: Uh huh. That helps too.

Kinna: That comes with being a low blood pressure person. Ah Kim from Windsor, California, “when I have a stressful week I’m twice as bloated as normal. Is there a connection?”

Tony: Yes!

Kinna: Okay. Well what is that connection?

Tony: So Will just talked about it little bit.

Will: Yeah. When, usually we associate bloating with either not enough stomach acid or poor bile flow. Whether it’s in your upper abdomen, that would be related to like not enough hydrochloric acid. Or if it’s in your mid or lower abdomen usually more bile related. But either one, whether it was the flight or fight, sympathetic nervous system state that caused your body to sort of de-prioritize digestion, or if it was your digestion that was off and that created this like low mineral, low blood sugar situation. Either one, like it’s gonna impact you. So I would, I would take a look at first and be like we’ll hold on what, what came first; the chicken or the egg here? Was it the digestion off and low resources? Or was it your nervous system messing up your digestion?

Tony: Right.

Will: And it could be both.

Tony: And there’s also things that you can do that some people can find some relief by just trying to view things differently. You know a lot of times when we’re stressed about something we’re looking at you know the worst case scenario that usually is never going to happen. But even like, like Kinna if she’s late to the gym she gets all stressed out about it because she thinks I’m going to make her do burpees or something when she gets there. But if you think about the reality of you doing burpees, I mean you do them and you’re good at them. And it, it sucks while you’re doing them but then it’s over and everything was fine. So a lot of times we magnify the worst-case scenario in life. And it’s, if we understand what we’re doing to our body by doing that, then it may be enough motivation to be like “hey, maybe I try to look at it a different way so I don’t cause not only the stress to me, but to my actual cells and my body.”

Will: She just can’t stop thinking about burpees now.

Kinna: Yeah. Now I’m thinking about burpees.

Tony: Well so, so what did we learn today?

Kinna: Well, keep your minerals lifted. Keep all your, you know your blood pressure everything good. Is this an intervention cause everyone’s looking at me.

Will: We’re just trying to make sure you’ve got a checklist, look at the checklist before you get into the office.

Kinna: Calm down. I didn’t get the memo. Uh yeah but if those things aren’t working then probably it’s going back to your digestion because you’re not able to pull the nutrients from the food, the minerals or digest certain things. And that’s…

Tony: Right. And if you’re in that catch-22 of is your stress reducing your ability to digest, or is your inability to digest reducing your ability to pull resources out of the body so the body could deal with the stress? You know and you have to look at life too. I mean physiology can help a lot but if, if like your job is an assassin you picked a stressful job.

Will: You gotta really meditate.

Tony: Right.

Kinna: Right. You gotta meditate all day.

Will: So you know look at what things are real stress in your life and what can be maybe viewed a little bit differently to help you reduce what you’re doing to your body. Yeah. I’ll just like reiterate a couple main markers you’d want to look at. Like if your blood pressure’s low that’s a huge thing that could make you feel stressed and anxious.

Tony: And what do you mean by low? What is low?

Will: If it’s, like if you’re, if you get a little cuff at like CVS, or Rite-Aid, or wherever else and you put in on your arm and it says a number below 113, that’s the top number; and below like 73 is the bottom number, then you’re probably in an electrolyte deficient state. But if it’s way high too that can also make your body kinda freak out and feel stressed. So there’s steps you can do to correct your electrolyte deficiency which you talk about in all your books and…

Tony: And in our free course too. It teaches you how to look at your blood pressure and stuff like that.

Kinna: At kickitinthenuts.com.

Will: Right. So you can watch the little video to look at that. You can also look at your breath rate, which is a really important thing. It can tell you a couple things. If you’re breathing really, really slow it might be because your body, your blood streams way too alkaline which you could create the situation if you’re like alkalizing on purpose like drinking alkaline water, or baking soda, that kind of stuff.

Tony: Right.

Will: Or you might just be a slow-oxidizer. Like most diabetics are in that situation where they’ve created insulin resistance and it’s screwed up their ability to metabolize carbs, and their breath rate’s really slow because of that. So if you check out that blog post there’s a little equation that I teach how to do. But I think I’ve mentioned on previous episodes.

Tony: You’ve mentioned it on other episodes and it always sounds really complicated when you talk about it. But when you, when you look at it it’s not that hard. So where can people find you on Facebook?

Will: If you go to Facebook/MyBodyOfKnowledge, that’ll link them over or on the blog post. And the equation’s really not that difficult; you just subtract the top number of your blood pressure by the bottom and it gives you your pulse differential, and you divide that by your breath rate. And if that number’s bigger than three you’re stressed out.

Kinna: Okay. If I can’t do it on my fingers.

Will: I tried to say, I tried to say it so simple. It’s written on there.

Tony: It really is easy but every time you hear somebody say it it’s like oh my gosh, what is he talking about?

Kinna: I’m getting stressed out.

Will: Yeah. You know what if I changed the words like subtract the top number by the bottom number and that gives you a puppy.

Kinna: That’s better.

Will: And then you divide your puppy by the number of breaths you take and then…I don’t know.

Kinna: Squirrel! Puppies are cute; now I’m thinking about puppies.

Will: Right. Anyhoo.

Kinna: Oh, now I’m stressed cause I had to figure out that equation.

Tony: Maybe we’ll just have a nap. Yeah. If all else fails just take a nap.

Kinna: That’s another good thing you know. Just shut off the world and go to sleep for a few days.

Will: We didn’t even mention Prozac as a resource.

Tony: Oh yeah. That’s not the resource we were going to hit on.

Will: Anyway.

Tony: Yeah so I think the main thing to understand is that look at what’s causing your stress. Do you have the ability to adjust that? But the main thing is, does your physiology magnifying that? Because if your stress is at a 10 and maybe 7 of that is just caused by you know a lack of resources or some other physiological issue. Then if you can improve that all the sudden your issue may be a 3 or 4. And we can handle a 3 or 4. Like a 3 is “I’m out of paper towels.” That’s not a big deal. I can survive without paper towels. So if you can help your own physiology it may reduce a lot of your stress in that way alone. I’m all done with stuff.

Kinna: Alright. Well if you want to learn more about how to look at your own chemistry you can read any of Tony’s books or take the free four week Digestion Course at kickitinthenuts.com. And we’ll see you next time where we’re going to be talking about cold sores and canker sores.

Tony: Yes. Cold sores and canker sores.

Kinna: And cankles.

Tony: No. That’s a different topic.

Kinna: No. We’re not talking about cankles but cankers.

Tony: Simmer down!

Kinna: Later!