The advice and informational content does not necessarily represent the views of mother's market and kitchen mother's recommends consulting your health professional for your personal medical condition.

Hello, I'm Kimberly King, and welcome to the mother's market radio show, a show dedicated to the Truth, Beauty and Goodness of the human condition. On today's show, it's a new year, and we'll all be facing new challenges, so that means some added stress in our lives, we're gonna tell you how you can handle that stress and have a more relaxed, productive life this year, plus later will be telling you what to do at mothers and what's going on around town.

First step, it's time to de-stress, and if you've ever had trouble relaxing and letting go, we're gonna show you how to bust that stress, we are pleased to welcome a new guest to our show, Dr. Susan Smith-Jones, she's an educator. Extraordinary. Susan is one of the world's foremost experts on using natural remedies, living a balanced life, looking years younger, setting extra weight and creating high level success and happiness, and author of her were 25 books and 2000 magazine articles on these topics. Her latest best-selling books include walking on air, you're a 30-day inside and out rejuvenation makeover the joy factor, 10 sacred practices for radiant health, and a full color recipe book, recipes for helpless. And it is my pleasure to welcome her to the mother's market radio show.

Susan, how are you?

Hey Kim, I'm doing great, and I'm so happy to be with you.

So why don't you fill our audience in a little bit on your mission and your work before we get to the show's topic... Well, gosh, I started decades ago in the holistic health I taught students, staff and faculty at UCLA had to be healthy and fit, and then I started writing magazine articles and books, now I travel all over the world teaching people how to be vibrant ly healthy body mind and spirit and... Well, no time like the present. Body, mind and spirit, and today we're talking about how we can reduce step stress we feel in our lives now more than ever, lives pressures lead to increased stress for everyone, so we can't wait to hear what you have for us today.

So dry is reducing stress, so important... Well, let's face it, Kim, who's not under lot to stress these days, and the American Association of Family Physicians reports that two-thirds of all doctors visits are directly related to stress, and it's also believed that 80 to 90% of all diseases are stress-related, and since you're a female, you might wanna know that all females are more stressed out than men, study after study has found that women suffer from both stress and depression more often than men, but when you're under lots of stress, your body doesn't function at an optimum level. And before I tell you, Kim, what causes me stress? Tell me what causes you to be stressed out and probably lack of sleep and hopefully she's not listening, and I hope I don't wanna get in trouble, but my mother-in-law, that would probably stress me out too, but you know what you just mentioned, that everyone has stressed, but men and women, doing women tend to stress more to... Women usually take on the weight of the world more than men, and often men will go to work and then they'll come home and they sit in their easy chair and they relax, but women, when they come home from work, they often have a second job, and even if they are a stay-at-home mom, they work 247, and so it's really important for women to take better care of themselves because if they don't, they're not gonna be much good for anyone else in their lives, those multi-tasking moments yet, but I totally agree with that, Okay, well, what are the triggers?

Well, for some people, it might be weather-related, like tornados, earthquakes and fires, some people might be the thread of terrorism, but also things like bumper-to bumper traffic and unpaid bills and constant noise, but stress can also be triggered by emotions like anger, fear, depression, worry, grief, and even guilt and Kim, when you are stressed out to the max and you don't know how to manage it well, it can actually lead to high blood pressure, heart problems, causes you to gain weight, it causes fatigue, muscle and joint pain, it also causes headaches, sleep debt and many other illnesses and chronic health conditions, so it's important to realize when you're under lots of stress and then you can deal with it by thinking about and incorporating all these stress tips that we'll talk about.

Yeah, I've been there on some of those stress, and I can't wait to hear some of those tips, but is there some stress... That's good for us, you know, a little bit of anxiousness is not bad for the body, but it's when you become way too anxious and you don't have good ways to quell that anxiety, that it affects every system and every cell in your body. I know that when I give talks in front of large groups of people, sometimes as large as 4000, a little bit of anxiousness is good to begin, but then I find that I settled in well, and then hopefully people will begin to laugh and I know they're paying attention and the anxiety will go away, but it's when it gets over the top that it wreaks havoc and every system of your body... Well, we all deal with stress in different ways, what are some ways that we can reduce that distress point... Excellent question. So I'll go through some of my favorite tips and I'll start with one that you've gotta make sure that you engage in every day, and I call this stress buster, get moving, because exercise is one of the best ways to reduce stress in your body, and there was a great study done at USC, it was a classic study done a few decades ago, and they took a group of stressed and anxious subjects, probably nobody listening to this program right now, and they have them take a walk vigorous enough on the track at USC to raise their heartbeats to over 100 per minute, and they discovered that the stress and tension in their bodies, which is measured by using a EMG machine or an electro-morph on the surface of your body to record the tension and your muscles, they found that a single bout of 15 minutes of walking reduce stress in the body by 20%, they found that also, they had a second group of people and they gave them a tranquilizer, didn't have them walk and found that they had little or no change in the anxiety in their body.

So if you're stressed out or you know something's coming shortly that will cause more stress, make sure you go for a walk or hit the gym, maybe you do some weight-bearing exercise or give yoga try. Studies have shown that those who practice yoga have lower stress hormones than those who don't... Get those endorphins going.

Okay, so outside of exercise, do you have any other mistress busters and do I ever... And we're going through body, mind and spirit with the... So exercise was physical, the next one is more mental and emotional and spiritual, and it's to meditate and breathe deeply.

Now, for 40 years, I've been a discipline meditator, I learned to meditate as a teenager from my grandmother, and I want everyone listening to not... Because you don't have to be a Buddhist monk to know how to meditate, here's how you do it, you just find a nice, special place in your home, and if you live with lots of people may be the place that you go where nobody will bother you would be the bathroom, but wherever it is, you let people know that barring any emergency, you don't wanna be bothered at this moment, and you sit there quietly and something you can focus on to take your mind off the chatter that's always going on in that brain of yours, as you could focus on your breath, so you can sit there quietly with your back straight and Breathe in slowly and deeply in and out, I won't do it now because I don't... I want people listening to not go into a deep level and not listen to what we're saying for the rest of this interview, but you just take a few minutes if it's five minutes, great. If you have 10 or 20 or even 30 minutes, and as you breathe deeply and take your mind off the chat chatter going on in your mind and focus on the sound and the rhythm of your breathing, you'll find that your heart beat begins to slow down and you become even more focused, but more joyful, it takes away the stress in your body, there have been so many studies on this that it helps you become more relaxed and peaceful and happy, and if that's not enough to start meditating, study show that those people who meditate on a regular basis, look 12-15 years younger than people of the same age, you don't meditate, so make that a new practice in your life and you'll find that whatever stress comes to you throughout the day, you can handle it much more efficiently and with the lawn and a Plum, if you meditate a little bit every day, it will make a profound difference in your life.

My next stress buster is You wanna eat a stress-relieving diet, now, this is where everybody listening to this, you are so blessed to live near a mother's market and kitchen, because this is where you can get the best foods to keep your stress level down and people always say, Susan, can what I eat really affect the stress level of... In my body, and I say, You bet it can, because you can take stress off your digestive system by eating foods that are rich in colors or rainbow of colors, and you wanna focus on as many fresh fruits and vegetables as possible because they're higher and water content and therefore, they're easy to digest, especially life green vegetables like spinach and remain Leds and parsley and kale, and all the other vegetables from cauliflower, broccoli, onions, garlic, all of these fruits and vegetables, fruits like apples, bananas, berries program, great fruit, citrus, they're all excellent for your body they're rich in antioxidants, and because they're high in water content, they keep your body and your liver cleaned, our diet can make such a big difference and the stress busters to... We have learned so much, great, interesting information. We're gonna learn more about stress and how we can bust that stress more when we come back... Stay with us, we'll be right back.

Welcome back to the mother's market radio show. And we wanna remind you that if you missed any portion of today's show, you can find us on iTunes by searching mother's market or download the show from our website, mother's market dot com, click the link for radio and listen to past shows, plus download our Healthy Recipes and money savings coupons, all available at mother's market dot com.

And now back to our interview with Dr. Susan Smith-Jones and we're talking about stress and what we can do to limit it, so... So, and tell us what we can do right now to help reduce our stress, and tell us another one of your stress busters.

Well, Kim, the next one's easy to incorporate into your life every day, and it's... To keep your body hydrated, our bodies are 70% water, our cells are 70% water, and so is our planet earth, and I don't think that's a coincidence at all, each day we need to drink at least a glasses of water and even more, if we're in a hot or dry climate like in the desert or in the cabin of an airplane, and at a cellular level, dehydration mikes is drupe is a neglected violet, and if anybody listening wants to look a little bit younger, quickly keep in mind that lack of moisture in our faces causes wrinkles, the way lack of moisture and grapes causes raisins or in prunes or in plums causes prunes. So you wanna make sure that you drink throughout the day, if you get to the point where you're really thirsty, your body is probably completely dehydrated, and if you think, Well, I don't need to drink much water because I drink lots of alcohol and coffee and colas, you see, those beverages are wet, but they're very dehydration to your body, so you wanna make sure that you drink lots of water throughout the day, you need water to maintain a fluid balance in your brain and in your kidneys to rid your body of material waste and to maintain vibrant health water is also a cheap and safe and very effective appetite suppressant, so make sure you get in the habit of carrying a bottle with you, and my grandmother taught me when, again, when I was a teenager, to put cinnamon sticks in my water and one cinnamon cinnamon stick is a tight curl and it takes about two days for it to open up, and in the meantime, you can transfer that stick from bottle to bottle or Glass to Glass, and then after two days you throw it away or put it in the soil, and add a new stick and that will give a faint flavor note to your water, which... And also, cinnamon is anti-aging, anti-inflammatory, and it helps balance out your blood sugar level, and in what you might not know about me is I was really sick as a teenager, and my grandmother... I'm a long story short, my dad died unexpectedly and I didn't handle it well, and I ate everything in sight for a year, and after about 12 to 14 months, I gain lots of weight and then had acne and allergies and asthma and arthritis, and my grandmother... We thought she was that cookie Health Net. I didn't know lots about how she lived, and she came to me one day when she saw how sick and desperate I was, because at that point in my life, I wanted to check out, and I was really being bullied in high school, and my nickname is sunny and she said, Sunny, if you follow everything, I say for 30 days, I promise you, the weight will melt away, the arthritis, the asthma, the acne, the allergies will go away, and you'll be feeling on top of the world, so she had my attention. I followed her guidance, which included the right diet and exercise and meditation and spending time in nature, and in a month I was feeling better than I ever had in my life, and then I followed her guidance and worked with her for seven years. She was not a doctor, but she lived close to the earth, and she always taught me that health comes from the farm, not the pharmacy, and because of her wisdom and guidance, I have never taken any medication in my life, and now it's been over 25 years that I've even been sick with a cold or the flu, but she taught me what to live at Xuan, how to live so that I could be vibrant-ly healthy. And then since the early 80s, I had a private practice where people come to me from around the world, or I go to see them and teach them how to be healthy, but she taught me always to drink lots of water throughout the day and put a cinnamon stick in my water. Well, I've heard about the lemons and cucumbers, but never... Semantic, that's good advice. What other activities can help with stress, you wanna be out in nature as much as possible, too many of us work in offices and in homes without breathing in those healthy negative ions out in nature, when you're out in nature and you appreciate the beauty all around you, it takes the stress level way down and it boosts your immune functioning.

Now, I'm fortunate to live in the Santa Monica Brentwood area, and my home is minutes from over 30 trailheads, and most mornings early in the morning, I begin my day with a beautiful hike and Santamaria mountains and whatever troubles. I think I have at the beginning of the hike, they're all dissipated at the end of the hike, so not only do I get a great workout, but I also feed my soul as well, and it puts me in the best mood. It's a great way to start the day. And maybe you don't live near the mountains and don't have time to hike, but there might be a local park near your home, so on your way home from work, you could stop and take a walk in the park or a walk in your backyard, or find ways to bring nature indoors, live plants in your home, maybe you bring in a little fountain in your home, so you hear the sound of water, all these things, the sounds of nature will help heal your body. And even on my website, Susan Smith, Johns dot com, right in the side bar, I have all these nature sounds that you can click on, so you can hear the rolling waves at the ocean or the babbling brook, or the breeze through the pine forest, and... Because nature sounds help keep your entire body. peaceful and relaxed.

Okay, you got me one, you were talking about peaceful and relaxed and that... Just put me right there in the moment. And speaking of which, how much does sleep affect our stress level... This is what I'm particularly interested in, doctor. Oh, it affects it immensely. You see, lack of sleep undermines your body's ability to deal with stress, and that's why most people, most adults need at least seven to eight solid hours of sleep every night, and children need more sleep than that, and even young babies and toddlers obviously need the very most... But the sad truth is, Kim, that about 85% of Americans are walking around and sleep debt, and when you don't get enough sleep night after night after night, it causes you to age more quickly for your body to be more stressed out, for your blood pressure to go up causes you to gain weight, and it shortens lifespan, so you've got to make getting good sleep every night non-negotiable, and besides that, I know my grandmother taught me this and my mom, they would always say things will look more positive after a good night sleep and that's the truth. And when you don't get enough sleep at night, it causes your body to crave foods that are not good for you, and also causes your body to hold on to all the calories you eat, so if anybody listening wants to lose a little bit or a lot of weight, you've got to make sure that sleep is a lifestyle choice and a practice that's non-negotiable, that you get night after night after night, well, I need to start negotiating my non-negotiable seeded.

This is something that we hear a lot about, and it's laughter, laughter that relieves... And we all need more of it.

Can you talk a little bit about laughter? Well, that is one of my favorite stress busters. In fact, studies have shown that those people that laugh the most have the lowest level of tension and anxiety in their bodies, and so maybe you're stressed out about something, maybe stress with a loved one, or monthly bills that are stacking up for poor grades with a son or a daughter that they're bringing home from school, but whatever it is, one of the best ways to multi-stress is to make sure that your life is filled with laughter, and according to some of the latest studies, laughter releases endorphins into the body that act as natural stress busters, in fact, when you have a good belly laugh, and you should have this a few times a day, it gives your heart muscles a good workout and improve circulation, it fills your lungs with oxygen-rich air, it clears those respiratory passages, it stimulates stimulates... Stimulates is that... It stimulates alertness hormone, and it also helps relieve pain and counteract fear, anger and depression, all of which you're linked to illness and stress, so be sure you schedule some time for laughter in your day, so maybe you read a book that tickle your funny bone, maybe you go see a movie that makes you laugh for some of your favorite TV shows, like... One of my favorites is modern family, that always makes me laugh. And what I do most mornings says I'll wake up and I immediately walk into the bathroom and I look at myself in the mirror, and that all piece makes me laugh first thing in the morning. And the other thing I do, Kim, you might appreciate this, and it might also tell you why I'm still single, is there's a song I sing every morning, I belt it out, and it's from the musical Oklahoma, and the song is, Oh, what a beautiful morning. Do know that song. Oh, what a beautiful day. I've got a wonderful feeling, everything's going my way. So that's a great way to start the day. And knowing I'm sending to nobody, it makes me laugh, but wherever you can find ways during the day to laugh and not take yourself in your life so seriously, we need to be more concerned in life with our integrity and our experience of living than how we look to other people. And there's this old Scottish saying, Kim, that goes like this, angels fly because they take themselves lightly, so stop being quite so serious about yourself in your life, 'cause we're all here to love life and to celebrate life and to be the best we can be, and if we're always upset throughout the day, it's hard to get the most out of life and live fully and thrive, be thankful, be thankful, which by the way, that is another one of my stress busters, be thankful and you'll reap all the health benefits.

See, each and every day we need to take a moment to be thankful for all we have in life, because after all, gratitude is a great stress buster, and gratitude is like a dynamic energy that allows you to exert a might be influence on your world. Gratitude is like a connecting link or a bridge between you and all possible channels of good and honestly... And again, this is another lesson my grandmother taught me, that the path to peace and happiness is to live each and every day as gratefully as you can, and you might wanna consider, and you know what, you could get this at mother's market and kitchen. In fact, I saw them when I was there recently. You can get these beautiful books that have blank pages, and you can make your own gratitude journal, and every day before you go to bed, write down at least three things for which you are grateful, because not only will you be happier, but scientific study show that boost your immune system, it calms your body, and it makes every cell in your body vibrate literally at a higher level, which means you're gonna attract more of that into your body and never forget that we're always attracting to ourselves the equivalency of what we think we feel and believe so, if you're always focusing on negativity and things that are not positive in your life, you're gonna attract more of that back into your life, you focus on those things for which you are grateful and you'll attract good goodness and all the best things back into your life, what a great way to end this show. And love it. That's a great advice and a great way to say, Have a stress-free day.

Thank you so much for your time, Susan, and we look forward to having you on again. In the meantime, you can get more information on Susan and on her website, Susan Smith Jones dot com, learn more about her and even pick up one of her books, it'll be a stress-free way for you to get through the day. We look forward to our next visit. Thanks so much.

Thanks, Kim. I'm looking forward to that too.

Thanks for listening to the mother's market radio show, and for shopping at mother's market, the advice and informational content does not necessarily represent the views of mother's market and kitchen, mother's recommends consulting your health professional for your personal medical condition,