Shush, your body is trying to tell you something.

Hi there.

I’ve been thinking about how our bodies are just amazing, so well designed. Now you may be thinking, “I feel like poop, I can’t lose weight, and I have three diagnoses from three different doctors telling me that my body is  definitely not amazing, in fact, my body is broken.”  I get that. I’ve felt broken for a lot of my life, but the truth is that the things that lead me to believe that —  my inability to lose weight, the never having energy, and always feeling like my brain was just in a haze — were actually just my body doing its job really well.

What?!?

Let’s back up. Our bodies are designed to protect us. When we cut our finger our white blood cells rush to the wound to protect us from the bad stuff that can come in. When we are chased by a dog, our brain sets the stress response in motion so we can either fight or fly…um…er…run away. These things ensure that we don’t die from a paper cut or just give up and let the dog eat us. BUT…

BUT…

But when these systems are called on repeatedly they start to damage our body. For example, when we let things into our body that shouldn’t be there, like highly processed food, sugar, cigarette smoke, and other toxins, our bodies creates inflammation to deal with it. And it deals with it and deals with it until our inflammation response gets stuck on attack. Then it starts to attack us…our healthy tissue.  Likewise, when we are chronically stressed, our brain is under the impression that we are being chased by that dog all the time, which means the stress response is suppressing our normal processes, like absorbing and metabolizing our food or burning fat for fuel.

The good news is that our body will usually give us some signs that things are going wrong, but we are horrible at listening to those things. Unfortunately, it often takes us so long to pay attention that we listen only when something scary happens. So listen to your body and take those signs seriously.

In fact, before we getting into the busy time of year, I would encourage you all to stop and take stock of what your body is trying to tell you. Is it overwhelmed with stressed? Is it showing signs of inflammation, like swollen joints, bowel problems, brain fog, etc? For resources on stress management, check this out.  For real food recipes to reduce inflammation you can go here. And if you are interested to see if I can help you listen to your body and get it back in balance contact me here for a free health consultation.