Intro
Welcome to the Vibrant You podcast. I'm your host Bindi Stables and here we talk all things wellness and vibrant living. You'll learn about integrative health, functional medicine, holistic, and biohacking, and enjoy raw and real conversations on personal growth, mindset, and motivation. Optimize your body and mind and become the happiest the healthiest, most vibrant, you enjoy the show.
Hey, and welcome back to another episode of Vibrant You. Today we are talking about the eight key pillars of creating epic health. So if you are someone that you're always looking to improve and optimize your health and all levels, this episode is for you, we are going to be getting into the eight different areas that you can start to look at when optimizing your health.
These eight pillars are exactly what I use inside of my practice as an integrative health practitioner and mindset and wellbeing coach to help women create the most epic health that they possibly can for themselves.
The 8 Key Pillars to Vibrant Health
We're gonna get into these eight key pillars in a moment. And what I invite you to do as we go through today's episode, and as I share these key pillars, I invite you to go through and reflect on each of these different pillars on which ones are already feeling quite balanced for you. Okay? So I want you to celebrate and own, okay, this area of my health and well-being feels optimal. And I feel really satisfied and fulfilled with that area. And I invite you to reflect on which areas maybe could be improved.
Let's see if we can identify what those areas are for you so that those can become perhaps a top priority so that you can optimize and take your health and well-being to the next level.
The DESTRESS Protocol
These eight key pillars of epic health, this is also known as the DESTRESS protocol, which is a methodology that I've learned from my teacher, my mentor, naturopathic and Functional Medicine, Dr. Steven Cabral and he's done an amazing job of outlining the eight main areas that we need to look at to optimize our health. So I can't take credit for this. This is his amazing work.
But I feel excited to share this with you today, as sometimes when we think of health, our mind goes to some obvious places, thinking of diet and exercise, those types of things.
However, what I've noticed with clients is that you can be doing everything right, in terms of you're eating all the right foods, and you're exercising often. And you're still not maybe feeling as well and as vibrant as you might like to. So that's where a lot of these other pillars come in these more forgotten pillars of our health and well-being to take care of our bodies and minds in the best possible way.
So let's get right into it. The DESTRESS protocol is an acronym and it stands for these eight key pillars of Epic Health.
The de-stress protocol stands for:
- Diet
- Exercise
- Stress reduction
- Toxin removal
- Rest
- Emotional support
- Supplements
- Success mindset
So that is DESTRESS diet, exercise stress, toxins, rest, emotions, supplements, and a success mindset.
Let's get into all of them one by one and start to feel into which areas feel balanced for you and which ones you might start to optimize and improve.
1) DIET
So the D in the de-stress protocol stands for diet, I prefer the word nutrition, right, not focusing on what you're not eating, but what you are.
So of course, when it comes to our nutrition, this is the most obvious pillar right of epic health. So focusing on what we're eating, of course, we want to have a nutrition plan and our meals and our plate to be of Whole Foods, ideally, organic foods, natural foods, shopping, you know, the outside edges of our grocery store where we're eating a lot of fruits and vegetables, and we're getting healthy sources of protein and fats, ideally without any extra or unnecessary ingredients, right?
So we're not getting a lot of processed foods, a lot of preservatives, those types of things. There's so much debate out there on what is the best nutrition plan, and what is the diet plan, and we're gonna get into that in another episode. So don't worry, we will come back to that and explore what some of the best diets or nutrition plans are out there and which ones are maybe not as supportive but the main thing I want you to know here is that of course and our diet and our nutrition is the number one pillar when it comes to our health and well being.
2) EXERCISE
So next the E in the DESTRESS protocol stands for exercise. So this is of course the second most obvious pillar when it comes to our health and well-being moving our body. But what I want you to know is that moving our body is not just for our body. We also move our bodies for so many different reasons. As for our mind and our cognition, our focus our mental performance, of course, exercise induces endorphins and so many important neurotransmitters that make us feel motivated and focused and present and calm.
Of course, we need exercise for a healthy mood for digestion, even just the movement in our body stimulates circulation, which stimulates our digestion and supports our nutrient uptake. When it comes to exercise. Just like diet, there's so much out there in terms of like, well, what's the best exercise and how often should I be exercising, a lot of these things are bio-individualistic, meaning what might be right for your body might not be right for mine, and vice versa.
We all have a unique constitution, we all have unique needs. But the gist of this is that we want to be moving regularly, we want to have some sort of daily movement practice, even if it's just as little as five minutes in the morning to get us moving, focusing on a lot of walking, aiming for walking as much as possible in the day, there's a lot of science and research sharing the benefits of 10,000 steps.
Some people have devices and rings and watches and apps to help them measure that. So the basics, of course, are like daily, five-minute movement, practice in the morning, walking as much as possible. And adding in things like whatever you enjoy right weight training, or Pilates or yoga asana or running these types of things. So I will as well in another episode, share more on exercise and how to exercise and the best exercise protocols, and how to exercise best for your body. But we want to know that this is, of course, the second main pillar needed for epic health.
3) STRESS REDUCTION
Okay, so the third pillar is stress reduction in the DESTRESS protocol. So stress reduction and sympathetic nervous system regulation. What the heck does that mean? Our nervous system, which governs every system in our body is made up of two main branches, our sympathetic nervous system, which is our stress response, and our parasympathetic nervous system, which is our rest and digest response. They both govern different functions in the body from putting our body into a stressed state to returning our body to a balanced and homeostatic state.
So we all know the impact of stress on the body and the mind when it comes to the body. Of course, stress whether that's things external in your world and financial stress or family stress or relationship stress, you know, work stress those types of external things, or whether it's internal stress, things going on inside of our body pathogens that are keeping our body in a fight or flight state, our immune system in overdrive, as well as just emotional and mental stress.
But all of these different types of stress, of course, have an impact on our bodies and our health. Too much stress in our body without the possibility of coming back into balance can cause things like inflammation and it has an impact on our immune system. Our digestion. When our body is in a state of stress, it shuts down our gastric secretions, which of course leads to bloating and perhaps the allowance of gut pathogens to proliferate and gas and issues with our elimination pathways. It messes with our gut motility.
Of course, stress has an impact on our hormones overall, as when we're stressed out our body's stress hormones, the main one being cortisol goes through the roof. And when our body is in a stressed state for any period of time, and doesn't allow itself to come back to homeostasis, which is a relaxed, balanced state. Of course, all of our different hormones are affected as cortisol, our body's stress hormone, which puts the body into fight or flight to manage the very stressor that we're experiencing steals what's needed for the production of sex hormones, and thyroid hormones.
So a lot of the sex hormone-related issues and period issues and fertility issues, as well as thyroid-based issues that we're seeing boils down to stress and the overproduction of stress hormones in the body, known as cortisol, which steals what's needed for those other hormones to be produced. So the truth is, is that our body is designed to experience stress, stress is not a bad thing.
Our body is very well equipped. And that's what's kept us alive as a species, since ancient times, right is our capacity to experience a stressor, to put our body into fight or flight to either fight back against the tiger that was chasing us in ancient times or to run away from it. And then for our body to be able to come back into balance, and to come back to a relaxed state after the stressor is removed. However, in modern times, and just our society that we live in, we're almost always in a perpetual state of stress of stimulation, of going and doing and achieving and our body misinterprets a lot of these things that we experience as stress as actual threats and dangers, to our safety and well being so our job isn't to stop necessarily stress from coming in.
Our job is to understand how to manage it, and how to support our nervous system to experience the stressor, and then to come back to balance. So, of course, things like meditation and counseling and therapy and relaxation practices, managing our lifestyle, trying to minimize stressors as much as possible, this is all going to be supportive.
4) TOXIN REMOVAL
Okay, number four in the DESTRESS protocol, the T stands for toxin removal.
So why is this important? Of course, so many of our bodily functions are designed to work in their natural way. However, in our modern society, we are exposed to such a level of toxins and chemicals and pollutants through the air that we breathe, and the food and the pesticides in the food that we're eating and the water that we're drinking, and all of these household chemicals and cosmetics and toxins present in them that this creates a such a burden on our body.
Yes, we have natural detox organs that are designed to help eliminate these toxins from the body. However, for two main reasons, one, we're simply exposed to such a level of toxicity that we as human beings have never been before. And that overburdening our detox organs makes our detoxification pathways less effective. And second, we're not getting the nutrition that our body needs for our detox pathways to detoxify properly. So I created an entire episode on this detoxification, the importance of it, and how to detoxify the body.
So I will link that up in the show notes below if you're interested to learn more. However, the gist of this is that of course, we need to incorporate detoxification protocols into our lifestyle. So I practice quarterly detoxes. So four times a year at the change of the seasons, I go through an entire detoxification protocol, as well as I do daily detox rituals to maintain and support my body's detox pathways to the best of my ability. Things like oil pulling and tongue scraping, and dry brushing, all of these things are very supportive.
And again, if this sounds like gibberish to you, please check out the episode on toxin removal that I'll link up below it's going to be supportive in helping you to uplevel this particular pillar of your well-being.
5) REST
Next, we have rest. So the R in the distress protocol is rest. This is parasympathetic nervous system support. So just like we have our sympathetic nervous system, which is our body's stress response, what puts our nervous system into a stressful state to be able to fight, flee or have fun and respond to the stressors of life.
We also have this mechanism in our nervous system to turn that stress response off, and that is the parasympathetic state. This is our body's state of rest and digestion. So it's in this state that our body heals, and digests and repairs the body and brain. So we need rest is a wonderful and important and essential pillar for our well-being.
There are two main ways that we can support our rest. Number one is sleep. So getting eight hours of quality sleep at night and doing whatever protocols we need to uplevel our sleep if we're not if we are having issues falling asleep, staying asleep, or waking up feeling refreshed and energized the next day, we know that we need to uplevel our sleep and I will do an entire podcast episode on sleep.
As this is such a key pillar to our health and well-being and our mental health as well this is something that I work with clients inside of my Integrative Health Coaching programs on all the time, people with sleep issues and how it's affecting their digestion, their hormones, their mental and cognitive health and so on. So sleep is number one for rest.
Number two is incorporating non-sleep deep rest protocols, we call these NSDR's, which are things that are active and conscious relaxation practices. Things like restorative yoga, or yoga nidra, or simply having a quick 15-minute nap where you don't fully fall asleep but you're in that nice, subconscious, dreamlike state, as well as of course meditation.
This is probably the best of the NSDR's the non-sleep deep rest protocol is meditation, it's one of the best ways to get that level of rest to keep our body in that parasympathetic state, which is essential for our body to heal, of course, but also to optimize on all levels.
So I will link up as well I have an amazing guided meditation collection that I've created of several just short and sweet and calming, healing Meditations that are supportive. So if you're feeling like this rest piece is maybe one of the pillars that you'd like to work on to optimize your health and well-being and all levels.
Meditation and perhaps checking out these meditations can be a big support and the general rule and our main goal when it comes to rest is that we want to, for a minimum of 15 minutes per day hanging out in this parasympathetic state, deeply relaxed, really at peace ease full state where you're not rushing or doing or going, we're just in that nice, juicy, restful state.
6) Emotional Balance
Okay, number six, the E is in the DESTRESS protocol. The second E is emotions or emotional support. So of course, taking care of our emotional well-being is a key pillar to, of course, our mental health and well-being as well as our physical health.
So emotional support is things like doing the work that it needs that we need to heal from our past, to move through emotions, like sadness, anger or pain or grief, or trauma. A lot of this emotional support is finding ways and finding the capacity to feel our feelings healthily and reaching out for tools when we need like counselling and therapy.
And this is something that I work with women on inside of my Find Balance program, which is a combination of, of course, integrative health coaching to support the body and our health at the deepest levels. But knowing that our mental and emotional states deeply contribute to our physical well-being, we also need this piece, we use holistic counselling, and somatic healing practices to take care of these emotions so that we can unlock the deepest levels of vibrant health and well-being. So that's emotional support.
7) SUPPLEMENTS
Number seven in the DESTRESS protocol is supplements. So one of the key ways that we can support our health is to balance out what we don't have enough of in the body.
So the state of health is simply a state of balance. And disease or lack of health is a state of imbalance of either having too much or not enough of something that's the only way that disease can express itself.
So if we are experiencing things like nutritional deficiencies or gaps in our diet, working with supplements, and good quality, brand, and functional medicine supplements to optimize our well-being is going to be an essential pillar, we can use nutritional supplements in a way of having a foundational protocol, such as an activated multivitamin, or a daily nutritional support shake powder, bringing in things like daily fruit and vegetable blend to get in more fruit servings of fruits and vegetables and all the phytochemicals and nutrients involved.
These types of things are great just having an ongoing foundational protocol to just fill in your nutritional gaps. And in certain chapters of your life, if there are certain areas of your health or well-being that you'd like to support, whether that's your digestive health, your hormonal well-being, whether you're experiencing symptoms or issues with your cognitive health, your sleep, those types of things, your thyroid, then we might put you on a specific protocol for a shorter period of time to rebalance the body, and to use things like herbs and vitamins and minerals and omegas. These types of things rebalance the body at that deepest level.
8) SUCCESS MINDSET
Then finally, number eight, the final piece of the DESTRESS protocol, the last pillar to creating epic health is the success mindset. So of course, our mindset matters.
The first step to achieving anything in our life, including vibrant health always begins with our mind, our mind can be our greatest asset, but it can also be our greatest obstacle. So starting to look into how we think, right, what our thoughts are throughout the day, and where our beliefs might be holding us back. This is such a key pillar in our well-being as you can be doing everything right, you can be eating the perfect foods and exercising regularly, and taking all the perfect supplements.
But if we're not taking care of what's happening between our ears in the form of our thoughts, our healing can't take us too far, as our mind can supersede matter, right? And our mental-emotional states can work over our physical protocols and all these different things that we're doing. So the truth is, is that our thoughts, the things that we think become our feelings, our emotions, and our feelings become our actions, right? And it's the accumulation of our actions that create the results. Right? Where we are in life is an accumulation of our actions and our behaviour, all of which stems from our thoughts.
So we start to change our mindset and create a success mindset for ourselves. It all starts with self-awareness, becoming aware of our thoughts, and understanding that you are not your thoughts. You are the one that thinks the thoughts and gets curious and aware and mindful of what you're thinking from moment to moment and seeing how that might be an asset for you and how it might be moving you in the direction that you want to go in your life whether that is with your health and well Being or in your relationships in your work or your finances, or whether your mind is working against you. And it's becoming an obstacle to your health, your healing.
So, this is what I want to share for today.
Closing
These are the eight key pillars of epic health, the DESTRESS protocol.
Again, we had diet, exercise, stress reduction, toxin removal, rest, emotional support, supplements, and a success mindset.
So I would love to hear from you! What are the main areas or the key pillars that you feel are working well for you in your life right now? And what are the areas that you think would be most supportive to prioritize or to focus on next in your health and healing journey? I would love to hear from you over on Instagram, send me a DM.
And I will see you back here for another episode real soon. Take care!