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, we're going to discuss how we can better handle the stress in our lives from the we eat to the things we can take to help us minimize it, it's a show for all of us, So setback, relax, analyst and close.

Plus later, we'll find out what's happening around town, but first up, it's time to find our happy place on one of my favorite places in the world and learn some ways we can help ourselves deal with the stress, so we all have... And joining us today is nutritional consultant and certified natural health professional, Valerie Hall, Valerie appears in front of thousands of people each year and speaks on a variety of topics, and she even hosts her own radio show.

Welcome back. baler, how are you?

I'm doing great, thanks for having me back.

Well, happy you could join us again, and before we get to our topic, tell us the scope and focus of your work.

Well, I speak to people all across the country on ways to support their health naturally, I've been studying nutrition, both in terms of food and nutritional supplements for the last 15 years, and applied to a lot of that knowledge to my own health because I had some health issues, going back to when I was in my 20s, so I've been able to really help myself and family members, I also do a consultation practice, but many of those thousands of health-seeking individuals I speak to every year are right here at mother's market, so a lot of you know me. Good to talk to you all again. You have a lot of fans out here. Well, today we are talking about stress and we all have it, we've all got... And we have to learn to cope with it in many different ways, so talk to us about the types of stress that we might experience... Well, there are all kinds of different stress. Stress is defined by when whatever is coming in is more than we can handle, and so there are various types of stress, chemical stress, emotional stress, and physical stress, we mainly think of stress is emotional stress, but it can also be a chemical overload of something going on in the body that knocks us out of balance, a lot of our food chemicals, in fact, the average American is exposed to over 10000 chemicals a year, which is way more than our bodies are... I'm amazed we function as well as we either of all that, so we have all kinds of chemical stress that comes in their variety of things that are just very difficult for us to handle everything from food additives, colors, dies, artificial sweeteners, to pharmaceutical medication over the-counter medication, recreational, medication or alcohol, all of those things can be difficult for us. Other areas where we might get chemical exposure would include from our jobs, a lot of people have toxic jobs where they are inhaling fumes all the time, things like Housekeepers and hair and nail salons, and roofers and painters, and guys who work with carpet and tile and mechanics, and small guys and pesticides and oh my goodness, there's a lot of chemical exposure that goes on out there in the work world as well, and then dealing with heavy metals, a lot of occupations I... Dentists deal with a lot of heavy metals, for example, radiation, if you're an x-ray tech, a dental assistant, a chiropractor, you might deal with that type of chemical exposure, so lots of different ways that we get this chemical stress, then there's the emotional stress, and that happens whenever we get stuck in traffic, when we have teenagers at home, when we have a boss who's difficult to deal with, when we have a deadline approaching for a big project or inventory, a lot of things that can trigger this emotional stress... Certainly death of a loved one or a physical illness for yourself or a loved one can also trigger a lot of emotional stress, physical stress can happen from illness, but it can also happen from extreme exercise, while mild to moderate exercise is wonderful for us. More information is coming out that this extreme exercise where people are really physically stressing themselves can be difficult, because when we have one of these stresses, we become more susceptible to the other two kinds of your emotional life is really weighing you down, then the chemical stress and the physical stress are much more likely to topple you over or you know, any of the combination of those, so we have a variety of different kinds of stress that go on any time we're experiencing something that is more than our physical or emotional state can handle, we characterize that as stress.

Wow. And that's true, you don't even think about all everything that your body can handle each and every day with, so you've really explained that well, are there foods that add to our feelings of stress... Yes, caffeine is definitely a stress producer, sugar can also be a stress producer because it un-balances both these things on balance, our normal brain chemistry instead of being on a nice even keel, we get onto these extreme highs and lows, so any food like sugar and caffeine, that might cause us to dump our serotonin all at once into the brain, and serotonin a feel-good neurotransmitter, so once we push all that into the brain, we get a momentary rise, we feel good, we get a sugar high, if you will, or a caffeine high, but then there's the flip side of that, where things crash, so instead of being on an even keel, now we're on a roller coaster of brain chemistry, and that's what caffeine and sugar can really do, and then there are those artificial food chemicals that we talked about, one of my rules of thumb is if I can't pronounce it, I don't wanna eat it.

That's a good thing to follow. And so we don't... I don't even have to read it. If I see two paragraphs of chemical names, I can just put that food right back on the shelf, that's not gonna be helping us, and then a lot of people have food sensitivities, sensitivities might not show up as a full-blown allergy. We know when we have a food allergy, people who are allergic to shrimp might or peanuts might get anaphylactic shock, their throat, clothes as they can't bring that they certainly know that's going on, food sensitivities are more subtle and it's harder to pinpoint when we have a food sensitivity, because sometimes it can take 24 to 48 hours to manifest as a symptom, but a lot of things that people interpret as a disease are really a reaction to... One of the foods that they're eating, number one in food sensitivities is dairy, and the only dairy that is tends not be reacted to his butter, but all the other dairy, whether it's yogurt key for milk... Cheese can be a problem for a lot of people. The problems that dairy often causes our sinus problems and ear problems, breathing problems in general, and mucus problems, also digestive problems, a lot of people have irritable bowel issues and dairy is your prime culprit as a problem food for the digestive tract.

Even chronic headaches, I always suspect that there's a food sensitivity, some things going in the mouth on a regular basis that the body doesn't like auto-Immune conditions can also be a reaction to a food sensitivity, chronic pain, and as we're talking about today, stress, this feeling of anxiety is an underlying problem for a lot of people who have food sensitivities, so number one is Gary, number two is gluten, and number three is corn, number four is soy, and most people have some sort of a negative reaction in some way to sugar, whether they realize it or not.

And it's interesting, 'cause the flip side of these sensitivities are addictions, these are foods you crave, if you crave milk with every meal, chances are pretty good, you've got a dairy sensitivity, you said that before, and I remember when you crave something, then you have that that... I wanted to stop the attest is so true. That's a very flip side of that, so these food sensitivities can be an underlying cause of stress, and that's both your physical and chemical stress kind of combining in your own body and really make you uncomfortable. A lot of people get extreme anxiety and panic attacks from low blood sugar as well.

Can I ask you something?

Yes.

Okay, what if you crave sugar, that's also an issue where blood sugars and interesting. It's also a roller coaster, so when we eat sugar or processed flower, blood sugar sky rockets up and then we produce a bunch of insulin and insulin funnels all that sugar into fat cell storage, or if we can use it as physical energy. Those are the two things that our sugar and starts can do is either physical activity, energy or store and as that... And then when we get to the bottom of that blood sugar roller coaster, that's when your body starts screaming at you for more sugar, so sugar cravings indicate an out-of-balance blood sugar system, even if it hasn't showed up and tests as a problem or anything like that, but sugar cravings. Your body is sometimes craving more energy or that momentary release of serotonin, if you're bottomed out on your feel good neurotransmitter, your body can start to send signals, so it's either low blood sugar or a low brain chemistry, I think that is the most... Often, the reason that our body starts to scream at us for more sugar, I think that's fascinating, that when you crave it, that absolutely becomes... That is, it's a problem.

Exactly. Interesting, and so the low blood sugar reaction, again, when you get to the bottom of the blood sugar roller coaster, a lot of people get a lot of anxiety, so the first thing that happens when blood sugar gets low is there are a couple of kinds of low blood sugar, most people who have low blood sugar, it's called reactive low blood sugar where they're reacting to the carbohydrates, they ate, the blood sugar skyrocketed up and then it plummeted down either too fast or too low, it might not even be too low, as far as what the numbers say, but if it's going down fast or if it's relatively low over what their blood sugar usually is, they get... Their body interprets it as being low, so this lower blood sugar, the first thing that happens is it's very hard to concentrate and focus, it also tends to make people very irritable and anxious, so this is why it's associated with stress and anxiety. This low blood sugar can really bring on a lot of that if Busoga continues to stay low for a long time, things like shaking and tremors might develop, people might break out into a sweat or develop a headache, so all of those can be symptoms of low blood sugar, in fact, I think that a lot of people who wake up with headaches on a regular basis are having low blood sugars over night, and people who don't sleep well, 'cause it's hard to sleep if your blood sugar is low also, so there are variety of things that might be causing this, but food sensitivities are really big, and a lot of people just don't realize that they have them... A good way to figure this out, take your pulse before you eat, and then take your pulse 40 minutes after you eat, and if your pulse has gone up by more than 12 beats a minute, if chances are pretty good that you are reacting negatively to something that was in that meal. So that's one way to check it out, an excellent way is to give up the food that you suspect you might be sensitive to for six weeks and see how you feel, you might notice a big improvement in different types of symptoms, and you might notice less pain in the body, fewer headaches, better sinus health or digestive health, if you're not sure after six weeks of elimination if that was a problem, food or not, then the next day, have it with breakfast, lunch and dinner, give yourself a challenge. Oh, your body will let you know pretty quick if that was a problem food, you'll get a loud and clear message then, so eliminate the food and then add it in a big amount if you weren't sure, and that'll tell you if that's a problem food for you oh my goodness.

So that's a really interesting thing, although all those different food triggers that we have... Yeah, this is good. Interesting, I wanna talk to you about lifestyle issues and how those are concerned as far as the stress, because again, we all have this... Absolutely, we do.

One of the things I recommend to everybody is deep breathing, boy, nothing can change the way you feel faster than 10 deep breaths, so just a long inhale through the nose, hold it, and then out through your mouth all at once, 10 of those. Boom, you don't feel better.

I love to do that when I lay down to go to bed, if I'm stuck in traffic on my bad dream is always about work, and for me now is that I'm stuck in traffic, I can't get to my seminar, I can't get to a landline to do my radio show or whatever.

That's the dream I am now, that stresses me out. But deep breathing will change the way you feel quickly, there are even breathing exercises, you can do breathing classes on breath work, probably videos at the library, things like that, that you might even look into, but even just your own deep breathing is very, very helpful. Any kind of exercise is going to be helpful at decreasing stress, especially the Slow stretching exercises, yoga, tai chi, both of those incorporate both stretching and breathing, so you get a wonderful twofold way to decrease stress. I do my yoga class, I try to get to it every week, but if I can't, I do some stretching and yoga exercises before I go to bed at night.

Very, very helpful. And another thing that's important that I think really adds to people's stress, don't over commit.

So that's a home...

Joshua's a big thing. People ask us to do things and then we say, Oh sure, I'll do that. And you add these things on to your already busy life and you end up getting really stressed out, things like sewing the costumes for the school play, or making cookies for the bake sale or whatever fundraiser that you're participating in for your kids school... I mean, my goodness, you can get so over-committed even at work or even for the holidays about buying gifts and getting out, doing the shopping, spending the money, there are variety of ways that we have a tendency to overcome it in this world is... And we can really help ourselves if we just learn to say, Well, no, no, no, I can't... I do that or I can do a little bit of that, but not the whole thing. So yeah, delegate, find ways to delegate, find ways to not over-commit, that's another very helpful thing...

Oh, I love that as I should have talked to you a long time and are you...

I'm gonna delegate and hire you...

I love you. This Narita is awesome.

Perfect, so it's good to be clear and direct with friends and family or co-workers about what you can do and what might be a little bit beyond what you wanna do at this point.

Well, we have so much more information with you, Ms. Valerie Hall about how we can live a stress-free life and take a big deep breath, and we're gonna be right back with more information. So right now, we're gonna take a quick break. VOS stay with us, we'll be right back. And 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 podcast from our website, mother's markets 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 nutritional consultant, Valerie hall, and of course, we're talking about stress, I mentioned stress-free, but it's more like stress management... Yes, I laughed. When you enter only we could achieve a street, it doesn't quite up, you'd be completely rich and not having to ever work again.

Right.

Yeah, stress management more like... And yeah, you've given us some great tips, actually with that counting to 10 and breathing deeply, you know, but let's talk a little bit about the supplements and support the way we deal with stress.

Lots of wonderful supplements. One of the things they found is that stress produces the stress hormone called cortisol, and this is associated with all kinds of issues because cortisol gets us ready for fight or flight, so if the Mount line was gonna jump on us, we either had to fight that Mount lane or run away. Those were our two options, so even when we're stuck in traffic, we get that same fight or flight response, and when we're getting ready for fight or flight, everything that isn't essential for those two functions shuts down, digestion shuts down, making new cells and repairing the body shuts down in, everything shuts down, so reproduction shuts down anything that's not essential for fight or flight stops, so this is why stress is an additive to all health problems and can even be an instigator of a lot of different health problems, there are some fantastic supplements, we can use to deal with that.

I think it's really important to use some supplementation because kids, when they make that stress hormone cortisol, they can clear it in 20 minutes, adults, it takes us about 24 hours to clear that cortisol, so it lingers for us, it hangs on. So we wanna make sure that our bodies are adapting and helped out with supplementation.

My number one recommendation is a supplement for stress is magnesium, magnesium is a natural relaxers of both body and mind, and so magnesium is a huge deficiency, 90% of Americans are deficient, and magnesium deficiency is even linked with developing all the major negative health problems, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, arthritis and osteoporosis are all linked to magnesium deficiency, so for many, many reasons we should be taking this, but it's a great relax or for the mind.

I like magnesium for anybody who worries all the time, stresses out over anything, jump at loud noises, any child or adult with the tension and focus issues, magnesium is a wonderful calming mineral, it is great in terms of muscle relaxation as well, any kind of cramping, whether that is you slept on your neck wrong and you wake up with your neck off to the side, or you're having back spasms, next spasms, muscle spasms. Resist leg issues, Charlie, horses, toes, the cramp over each other, menstrual, kinds of different cramps will do very well with magnesium, it's a natural muscle relaxers, so much so that it is also associated with normal heartbeat, hearts that go too fast or regularly. It's often a lack of magnesium issue there, magnesium important for bones, it's the number one thing for headaches, and it's very important for normal sleep patterns, while magnesium doesn't make you drowsy, it certainly can help calm you a great deal, the variety of different magnesium preparations on the market, they are all different versions of magnesium salts, and two of my favorites are magnesium citrate and magnesium and glycine, so there's an excellent magnesium-situated mother's market by natural factors is the company, and this is the one I recommend for anyone who tends towards constipation, citrate pulls more water into the bowl and makes it much easier to go to the bathroom, so citrate has some effect on the digestive track, and yet it is extremely well absorbed.

The other one I like is called Magnesium-glycan ate, and that one has the least effect on the digestive tract of any form of magnesium, and it's still extremely well absorbed, there's a wonderful magnesium glycine called High absorption magnesium by doctor's best vitamins at the mother's market stores. So that's the one that's gonna have the least effect on the digestive tract of any of the magnesium, so gets a magnesium in a minimum of 400 milligrams daily. A lot of people feel better with 60 or 700 milligrams of magnesium daily, so 400 is the RDA, but that's the bare minimum so that we don't develop diseases, so we might do better with more...

I like magnesium for anything that needs relaxation, whether you're talking about body or mind relaxation, the variety of other wonderful supplements, I also really like... Same Sammy is renowned for brain chemistry, mood and neural function. Sammy is one of these nutrients that we make in the body already when we combine our cellular energy, ATP and the amino acid, methionine. Boom, there's our Sammy.

So Sammy is a foundational building block chemical in the body, because it's both a sulfur donor and a methyl donor, exciting, I dot e, Etim, sitting in taking Cottingham and... Of your seat.

So we use sulfur and metal and all kinds of different functions in the body, and Sammy is renowned for most renowned for mood, they even did a study on menopausal women where it really helped their depression and anxiety levels dramatically, about 80% of them saw a great benefit was Sami, but Sami is also very good for liver detoxification and joint comfort and mobility. Wow.

That's a lot of diverse things.

It's very interesting. So I had one lady who runs a hole through the store who said that she gives it to her husband, tells him it's for his knee, but it's really... 'cause he's crazy.

I love it. Okay, hold on, I got a tour.

Neonatal into a cranky spouse, same. It's the capital letters S-A-M and then lower case d.So this is a really cool one. Excellent one. Stable ladies, Janeway good. Yeah, this is an excellent one for us, I really like the one by doctor's best vitamins you can find at mother's market because they use the Italian pharmaceutical grade Sami, which is much more potent than the American Sante, which most other companies use, so very good stuff. 400 or 800 milligrams daily is a great starting point for same other things we can use for stress, don't forget about good old chamomile tea.

It's right there in the cover. It's a little cup of tea, only costs a couple of dollars for your team bags or you can buy it in bulk, chamomile tea is a wonderful relaxers. I have a cup of cammell team most nights before I go to bed, it's an excellent way just to wind down, calm down. Love the camel T. this can be used safely for children, if they're agitated and hyperactive, this calms them down to... So camel can be an excellent helper, you can also get chamomile as a capsule or in a teacher as a supplement, so there are variety of ways to get that wonderful calming came meal in. And one of my other favorites is called Sun thinning, Santini is a brand name of the amino acid called El than... This is very safe also for all ages, Santini is extracted from the green tea leaf, it promotes mental calmness without making you drowsy.

So samhain and magnesium are my top things for anybody who has daytime stress, they can also both be used for night time stress, but daytime, these two don't make you tired, don't make you drowsy, but they definitely help calm you.

Something is excellent for children who go to school who might have attention and focus and hyperactivity, very calming for them. I love it for anybody when they're going to work, when they're going to school, when they're driving around doing errands, where they need to have... They need to have their mental faculties about them, however, they don't wanna be all stressed out, so it really helps you to cope with stress very well.

I find something, he works best if you take it before you get all stressed out rather than waiting till afterwards, so if you have a stressful life, take some every day. If you have a stressful event coming up, maybe it's inventory, we at work, or there's a big project due or something like that then, or your kids are gonna have finals and you know that's gonna stress you out and then we could all take the whole family can take to something very nicely, so that's an excellent strategy, then you could take it as needed, so whatever you like, even though it doesn't make you drowsy, I'm seeing that a lot of companies like using something in their SLEEPY TIME formulas because it stops those spinning wheels from spinning that might keep it to it exactly where you can't help thinking about all the things you've got to do... Oh no, I didn't get this done. Let's move me then that helps to call them that kind of a thing, so I love the sun then that's another really interesting one, El trip to fan is also available in our health food stores now and again, and elite fan is very safe. It's an essential amino acid and it helps to produce serotonin, Serotonin is our feel good neurotransmitter and excellent for sleep as well at night when the light... Stop hitting our eyes. Serotonin turns into melatonin. So if you're having trouble with sleep, My Favorite Things are the magnesium and the El trip to fan, and you go ahead and throw in a cup of Camel as well, so I think those strategies are really excellent things, excellent supplements at helping us to cope with stress. Cope with that cortisol and manage our stress response... Oh my goodness, I couldn't write fast enough.

I'm sitting or in that, I love that one though, with that boom there with them to think, good.

Well, thank you so much, you are just again, a wealth of knowledge and may be a tree management here, Valerie, thank you so much for your time, we really truly appreciate your knowledge, and we look forward to having you on again in the meantime, you can get more information on Valerie and our website, Valerie Hall nutrition dot com, and learn more about her natural approach to making us all healthier. We look forward to our next visit. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Kimberly.

We're moving through this week's mother's market radio show, but stay with us because next step will tell you what's going on around town.

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,