Managing Chronic Stress and Endometriosis

Welcome back to the Endo Belly Girl Podcast! Today is part two of our series on stress and its effects on endometriosis. If you haven’t listened to the first part, definitely check it out before you listen to part two. In this episode, I dive into the underlying reasons for stress and the actionable steps you can take.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

-What causes HPA Axis dysregulation: Understand why your body is in a chronic stress response.

-Types of stressors: How the external and internal stressors impact your stress response.

-Taking control: Why it's crucial to identify your stressors, make necessary changes, and know when to seek additional support like therapy.

-Lifestyle changes: How changing your lifestyle can address these stressors, and the importance of supporting it with a nutrient-dense diet.

-Adrenal health nutrients: The specific nutrients you need for adrenal health and why you need to have plenty of them, including protein, carbs, and fats.

-Caloric intake: The importance of eating enough calories, even if you're trying to lose weight, and the benefits of eating three meals a day.

-Limiting caffeine: Why limiting caffeine intake is essential for adrenal health.

-Blood sugar impact: How blood sugar levels affect your adrenal health and act as a stressor.

-Nutrient replenishment: The importance of nutrients, such as B vitamins, that you need to replenish to support your adrenals.

-Lifestyle stressors: Recognize lifestyle factors, like over-exercising, that can be stressors.

Stress is a huge topic, and there are many factors that impact it. If you have questions about what we discussed, feel free to reach out to me on Instagram. I love connecting with you and hope this episode provides insight into what you're experiencing and how to manage it!


Resources:
Episode 34

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Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes only. This may not be the best fit for you and your personal situation. It shall not be construed as medical advice. The information and education provided here is not intended or implied to supplement or replace professional medical treatment, advice, and/or diagnosis. Always check with your own physician or medical professional before trying or implementing any information read here.

Transcript

Alyssa Chavez [00:00:01]:
Hey, my friend, and welcome back to the Endo Belly Girl podcast. So today's episode is a part two. Last week, episode 44 was part one of this episode. So I really highly recommend that if you haven't listened to episode 44 yet, that you go back and listen to that one first and then come back and check out this episode because it will just make a lot more sense if you have listened to the other one first. Last week we really covered the ins and outs of how the stress response works in your body, how it impacts your body, and all the things you need to know related to that. Today we are going to talk about underlying reasons that this happens and what you can begin to actually do about it. I'm going to leave you with some actionable steps you can walk away with today because I don't want this information to just stress you out about being stressed all the time because that's not going to help, right? You want actual actionable things that you can do as you walk away from this episode. So we're going to take a look at today what causes this HPA axis dysregulation that we talked about last week, and why is your body in this chronic stress response that has such a cascade of health effects now? There really are probably as many reasons as there are people out there listening to this right now, but here are a few.

Alyssa Chavez [00:01:39]:
Right, some of the things that can really contribute to that HPA axis dysregulation and to that imbalanced cortisol stress. I'm talking about life stressors, right? Things we experience, like divorce, death in the family, changes in your job, moving, you know, some of those major life stressors. Or it can even be just the chronic day to day life stressors. Like sitting in traffic all the time, your job, you know, relationships, things that are kind of chronically causing stress, financial stress.

Alyssa Chavez [00:02:14]:
Right.

Alyssa Chavez [00:02:15]:
All the things that come up. If you live kind of an all work and no play lifestyle, you're not allowing yourself time to unwind and rest. Well, that can also contribute to that overall HPA axis dysregulation picture, right? Perfectionism. I laugh as I say this one because I am raising my hand over here. Guilty as charged. I, yeah, it's absolutely been a thing for me over the course of my life. Something I'm working on. I like to say I'm a recovering perfectionist, but it's a definitely still comes up.

Alyssa Chavez [00:02:53]:
But that can cause a lot of stress, right. When you always have this need to just be perfect all the time, that's hard right. That's stressful. What about trauma? Trauma is a big one. Childhood trauma, trauma from relationships, the trauma of going through a chronic illness and maybe experiencing infertility along the way. That's all trauma as well. And that can absolutely contribute to that overall imbalanced cortisol, hpa axis dysregulation. Picture.

Alyssa Chavez [00:03:26]:
Do you have unmet emotional needs or unprocessed emotions or repressed emotions?

Alyssa Chavez [00:03:32]:
Right.

Alyssa Chavez [00:03:35]:
Is there a lot of conflict in your life?

Alyssa Chavez [00:03:38]:
Right.

Alyssa Chavez [00:03:39]:
Everything we've talked about so far, those are kind of the external stressors, the things that happen around us through environment, relationships, things like that. But there's also things like internal stressors.

Alyssa Chavez [00:03:51]:
Right.

Alyssa Chavez [00:03:52]:
Eating a poor diet is a stressor. Having dysregulated blood sugar, you know, being on that chronic blood sugar roller coaster with up and down and up and down all day long, that's a form of stress on your body. Your gut health is a form of stress. Your digestive health, gut imbalances, food sensitivities, all stressors. If you're under eating and over exercising, that's a stressor. Not getting enough sleep, inflammation, all things that can be impacting that stress response, right. And the things I've listed out, it's really just the tip of the iceberg. But hopefully that can kind of get your wheels turning.

Alyssa Chavez [00:04:40]:
It can be a helpful exercise to even sit down and list out all of the sources of stress in your life right now and maybe see what can you do something about.

Alyssa Chavez [00:04:50]:
Right.

Alyssa Chavez [00:04:51]:
Because there may be certain things in your life that are stressful, but there's just not a lot that you can do about it right now. Maybe your job is stressful, but you just need that job financially and can't just walk away tomorrow because it's stressful. But maybe there's other things in your life that you can do something about, right. It's not about eliminating every single source of stress, but about understanding where that stress is coming from and being able to manage it as best we can. And that might mean just taking control of the things that we're able to take control of.

Alyssa Chavez [00:05:25]:
Right.

Alyssa Chavez [00:05:26]:
There is a really wonderful book out there if you want kind of an additional resource on all of this information. It's a book called when the body says no. Exploring the stress disease connection by Gabor Matei, I believe is how you say his name. I apologize to the author if I'm mispronouncing it when the body says no. It's a great book, great resource to check out if you want to hear more about this all right, so those things I listed out are really some of the main areas that dysregulation can come from. But let's take a look at what you can really do about it besides what I already said.

Alyssa Chavez [00:06:12]:
Right.

Alyssa Chavez [00:06:13]:
Trying to figure out where that's coming from, how can we really support the adrenals? And I have to say, number one is lifestyle.

Alyssa Chavez [00:06:24]:
Right.

Alyssa Chavez [00:06:24]:
I feel like so many people when they come to me asking how to support the adrenals is they're really looking for, like, what supplements can be helpful. What about those adaptogens that I've heard about? Can that be helpful for me? Yes, but the one thing I will say is that supplements are just not a replacement for dietary and lifestyle strategies.

Alyssa Chavez [00:06:48]:
Right.

Alyssa Chavez [00:06:48]:
They can also be helpful. Absolutely. And we'll talk about a little bit of that today. But number one thing to focus on is going to be how's your life, how's your diet?

Alyssa Chavez [00:07:01]:
Right.

Alyssa Chavez [00:07:01]:
And we're going to talk a lot about both of those today. So number one thing, when we're talking lifestyle, like I said, figuring out where your stress is coming from and what you can do about it, what things can you actually support and take care of? What can you let go of in your life, too? What can you delegate? What can you say no to? And I know, I know those are challenging questions. It may take a little bit bit of time to kind of sit down and get quiet with yourself and see if there are things that you can kind of let go of a little bit. I know when you're somebody like me who just loves that feeling of kind of being in control of things, that can be a challenge. But when you can allow yourself to kind of step back a little bit, it can be super, super powerful in the healing process. Things to think about, things to kind of process over time. And I think it's also important to mention the consideration for when do you actually need deeper support.

Alyssa Chavez [00:08:08]:
Right.

Alyssa Chavez [00:08:08]:
Because there's some things that we can do on our own. You know, there's a lot of work that you can do by yourself, but sometimes you do need deeper support, and that may be even some kind of therapy. I know that therapy gets kind of a bad rap, but if it's needed, it's needed, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, especially if you've got some past traumas and things that you're dealing with that you feel like are just really holding you back from being able to heal, that can be super powerful to get some support with that. I do know I don't actually know a lot about this to share, but I understand at least the concept of it being really supportive is EMDR, which is a type of therapy. You can look for a therapist in your area that specializes in that, and that can be super powerful. So that's called EMDR, just as a resource to kind of look into for yourself. So something to consider.

Alyssa Chavez [00:09:07]:
Right?

Alyssa Chavez [00:09:07]:
Is all of this hard to do? Absolutely. But is it the most important work that you've ever done in your life? You bet. Right. You are not going to have life changing results without changing your life. Also, we can give your body the nutrients that it needs through diet, and this can be a huge support while you are working on your lifestyle stuff. So starting out eating a whole food, nutrient dense diet, pack in those nutrients that might be being depleted through that stress response. I talked a lot about the ins and outs of diet in episode 34, demystifying the endometriosis diet. So that can be one to go back to if you want to really learn more about how to support your body through food.

Alyssa Chavez [00:10:04]:
But I will talk here about just some of the dietary specifics that can be especially helpful for adrenal health. First on that list is plenty of protein, right? And I say this in general anyway, I'm a big fan of protein. It has so many benefits in your body. But cortisol, that stress hormone that we talked about a lot last week, is catabolic. And what that means is that it causes breakdown of tissues, right? Remember how we talked about the cortisol kind of mobilizes things like glucose and amino acids and free fatty acids in your body so that you can have those resources available for that fight or flight response. So it's for a reason. Right? But at the same time, we need protein to help to repair tissues and for the inflammatory response.

Alyssa Chavez [00:10:58]:
Right?

Alyssa Chavez [00:10:58]:
So plenty of protein. I recommend aiming for 30 grams of protein per meal or doing the best that you can on that. And it's a lot. It's probably more than you think. Most of us are not getting enough protein, right? You really have to be intentional about protein. So just an example, because I know probably most of us can't just sit here and picture what 30 grams of protein looks like. It sounds great in theory. So just to paint a picture of that a little bit for you, an egg is about 6 grams of protein, right? A slice of bacon is about 8 grams of protein.

Alyssa Chavez [00:11:37]:
So breakfast that could get you to that 30 grams of protein would be three eggs, 6 grams of protein. So that would take you up to 18 grams and then maybe adding in two slices of bacon, those are 8 grams each. So that would take you up to 34, I think just over 30. If that's. If that's a little off. My apologies. Trying to do math on the fly here. I think it's somewhere in that range.

Alyssa Chavez [00:12:04]:
Just over 30 grams of protein. I know I talk to so many people who are just eating two eggs for breakfast. Maybe a couple of eggs and some fruit. I hate to tell you that's not enough. If your only source of protein in your meal is two eggs, that's only 12 grams of protein. That's not very much. That's less than half of what you actually need, especially when you are in a healing process. Okay, so eat the protein carbs, right? Eat the carbs.

Alyssa Chavez [00:12:37]:
It's very common these days for people to go on low carb diets. There's different versions of that out there. Low carb diets have their time and their place. Absolutely. But a very low carb diet can exacerbate adrenal issues.

Alyssa Chavez [00:12:56]:
Right?

Alyssa Chavez [00:12:57]:
I'm talking about, like those super low carb diets. Now, that doesn't mean you need to be on a high carb diet. I don't really recommend that either. Just somewhere in the middle. Moderate, balanced. I feel like to some extent, we've forgotten what that means in our day to day lives.

Alyssa Chavez [00:13:13]:
Right?

Alyssa Chavez [00:13:13]:
Moderate, balanced. Amount like 20% to 30% of your calories are carbohydrates. If you're just eating fruits and vegetables, especially focusing on those veggies, you'll be good. Don't stress about this. Just don't try to avoid all the carbs. Okay? And then fats. Eat the fats. If you are struggling with cortisol imbalance, or any hormone imbalance for that matter, you gotta eat the fats.

Alyssa Chavez [00:13:43]:
Fats are bueno. Fats are good for you. Okay? In fact, fats, cholesterol in particular, which I know gets a bad rap. You need cholesterol as a building block for your hormones. Your hormones are actually built from cholesterol in your diet. If you are not eating fats, you are not building hormones effectively, and I think that's important to know. Okay, so protein and carbs and fats, you want all of it. And are you eating enough?

Alyssa Chavez [00:14:22]:
Right.

Alyssa Chavez [00:14:23]:
We already talked about the protein needs, and many of us just aren't getting enough for the protein. So that's definitely a good place to start. But just avoid undereating. In general, eat enough calories for your body.

Alyssa Chavez [00:14:36]:
Right.

Alyssa Chavez [00:14:37]:
This whole weird, like, we're gonna only eat 1600 calories a day for some unknown reason. No. If you're struggling with adrenal imbalance, that's going to stress out your body. If you're not getting enough calories in, you need to get enough calories.

Alyssa Chavez [00:14:54]:
Right?

Alyssa Chavez [00:14:55]:
And actually, I will put in a little side note here. Yes, that's true. Even if you are struggling with weight, because here's the thing. If you're under eating, if you're not getting enough calories in your body, your body's going to start to hold on to weight because it's feeling stressed that it's not going to get enough food in the future. Okay? So actually, especially if you have some weight gain that you're struggling with, you need to be eating enough calories. Now, that's especially true if you are exercising a lot, right? If you are somebody who's just, you know, super athletic and, you know, really going for it with the exercise, that can also be putting stress on your body. We'll talk about that a little bit in a bit. But over exercising is going to be putting more stress on your body.

Alyssa Chavez [00:15:52]:
Eat breakfast. If you are struggling with hormone health, adrenal health, any of the things intermittent fasting is not, your friend. Eat breakfast.

Alyssa Chavez [00:16:05]:
Right.

Alyssa Chavez [00:16:06]:
Work to eat breakfast within 1 hour of waking.

Alyssa Chavez [00:16:10]:
Right.

Alyssa Chavez [00:16:10]:
If you don't love to eat first thing in the morning, at least have a little snack. No coffee on an empty stomach.

Alyssa Chavez [00:16:17]:
Right.

Alyssa Chavez [00:16:18]:
No skipping breakfast. No waiting until three or 4 hours in your day to eat breakfast. Eat your breakfast. You need that to stabilize your blood sugar and to tell your body that it is safe. Okay. And while we're on that note, just no skipping meals in general, we need to keep that blood sugar balanced. This is going to be a tricky one for some of you, but caffeine, yeah. If you are struggling with adrenal stuff, caffeine's gonna be a problem.

Alyssa Chavez [00:16:49]:
Okay. So ideally, we remove caffeine altogether for a period of time. It doesn't mean forever, but while you are healing and kind of letting things come back into balance, you gotta be off the caffeine. At the very least, heavily reduce the caffeine. I do recommend, if you're a big caffeine person, to wean off slowly.

Alyssa Chavez [00:17:14]:
Right.

Alyssa Chavez [00:17:15]:
For many people, stopping caffeine cold turkey is not gonna leave you feeling good. People get, you know, detox reactions, so to speak. You might not feel good, getting headaches and just not feeling well. So weaning off slowly can be good.

Alyssa Chavez [00:17:31]:
Right.

Alyssa Chavez [00:17:31]:
Kind of going half calf or, you know, one less cup of coffee to start weaning off can be really helpful with that. Now, I did want to circle back a little bit about the blood sugar thing. I talked a little bit about blood sugar, and like I said, I did have a previous episode where we talked about this more, but I did want to just unpack a little bit your blood sugar and how it impacts your adrenal health. So when your blood sugar drops, when you have a dip in your blood sugar, that low blood sugar feeling, if you ever get hangry, that's your low blood sugar. Okay? That low blood sugar triggers a cortisol release. When that cortisol is released, it impacts inflammation and your blood sugar control, because blood sugar control is actually one of cortisol's main jobs in your body. So cortisol responds to stress, cortisol also responds to low blood sugar. And that's important to know because, again, it's kind of the same response, right.

Alyssa Chavez [00:18:42]:
Cortisol stimulates moving glucose out of storage because your body stores glucose. Glucose is sugar, right? And your body stores it so that it has it there as a resource to use when it needs. And cortisol simulates moving that glucose out of storage and into your bloodstream to raise the blood sugar. And it does that whether it is responding to a stressor or low blood sugar.

Alyssa Chavez [00:19:09]:
Right?

Alyssa Chavez [00:19:10]:
So it's going to do that same thing whether you are stressing because your boss yelled at you, or your body's under stress because you haven't eaten in 8 hours. Right? Either way, the same thing happens. Now, there are also some specific nutrients that we need to help to support your adrenals. We talked last week about some of the nutrients that are heavily depleted with the stress response. And you might not be surprised to hear that those are the nutrients that we need to replete, that we need to replenish in your body in order to help you feel good again.

Alyssa Chavez [00:19:49]:
Right?

Alyssa Chavez [00:19:50]:
So let's take a look at those. And these. These can really be through food sources and or through supplementation. I'm not going to dig super deep into all of the options for food sources and supplementation and things like that. I know we've unpacked that on other episodes, but I will list out some of these key nutrients that can be really, really helpful for supporting the adrenals. Definitely b vitamins. We need b vitamins for proper cortisol function and energy production. Vitamin C.

Alyssa Chavez [00:20:21]:
Your adrenals actually contain a lot of vitamin C, higher than many other glands and things in your body, and it burns up that nutrient really quickly. In times of stress. So we want that vitamin C, magnesium is also depleted during that stress response and just a very essential mineral in our bodies. Zinc is also heavily depleted with that cortisol response and that zinc. We need to reduce inflammation for immune support and to help with that sex hormone production, right? We need essential fatty acids. Think fish oil, eating fatty fish like salmon and or supplementation. I often recommend supplementing with essential fatty acids like omega three SDhe as an endowarrior. Nordic naturals make some good ones if you're looking for a good brand.

Alyssa Chavez [00:21:17]:
And also glutamine and collagen, right? Excess cortisol can really deplete glutamine in your gut. And that glutamine is essential for gut health, right? It impacts leaky gut and food sensitivities and all the things. Now, we talked a lot about diet. We talked a lot about just reducing your overall stress load, but just a few other lifestyle things that you can be thinking about. Number one, are you over exercising? And that can be a little bit tricky to figure out. The main thing that I will say with that is just pay attention to how you feel after you exercise. Do you feel completely exhausted and depleted? Do you have to take a two hour nap after you exercise? Those are all things to be thinking about. Do you recover well after your exercise? If you get sore or, you know, anything like that? Does your body recover well or does it really struggle? Because those can be some signs that your body's sending you that it's maybe too much and that's going to be a little bit different for everybody.

Alyssa Chavez [00:22:24]:
Are you getting enough rest? And are you getting enough sleep? These are two different things. Just sleeping at night is not enough rest. You need to have intentional rest time during your day for your body to be able to repair and recover.

Alyssa Chavez [00:22:43]:
Right.

Alyssa Chavez [00:22:43]:
Especially if you're exercising. Especially if you live a just super busy, crazy lifestyle. It's so important to your health to schedule in rest time for yourself. And trust me, I struggle with this. I'm telling you this. And as I'm saying it, I'm reminding myself, oh, Alyssa, you need to work on that yourself. Getting rest time. Be intentional about that.

Alyssa Chavez [00:23:08]:
And are you sleeping? Are you getting that quality 8 hours of sleep per night? Cause that can be really, really helpful as well in that healing process. And are you practicing nervous system regulation practices? Are you breathing? Are you practicing meditation, yoga? Are you going on walks?

Alyssa Chavez [00:23:31]:
Right.

Alyssa Chavez [00:23:31]:
All those nervous system regulation practices. That's actually why that stuff is so important. I actually decided to offer that as part of my membership, the endowarrior circle. So we actually do a live practice once a month where we meet together and then I leave the recordings up so that people can access those anytime. It's just so important. So make sure that you resource yourself well for that nervous system regulation practices, right? It's just something that you need to have as part of your day to day life. Alright my friend, we unpacked a lot in these last two episodes. If you find yourself with any questions on any of that, please feel free to reach out to me on Instagram endobellygirl and I'm happy to help, but I hope that this helps to get you some helpful tips to get started, some things to think about and process, and also to help get give you a better picture of just what's going on.

Alyssa Chavez [00:24:31]:
Right?

Alyssa Chavez [00:24:32]:
And if that's something you may need to look into, like how your adrenal health is doing, you know, you can look into doing adrenal testing like the dutch test. I always recommend working with a qualified practitioner if you're going to do something like that because the dutch test, honestly is there's a lot and it can be very confusing if you don't know what you're looking at. It's not like you get the test back and you just get a clear result, right? I mean, it is a clear result, but it takes some doing to understand what those results mean, right? I've actually spent years really studying dutch test and what those results really mean and what to do about it. So something to think about. But it can be helpful if you find yourself really struggling with those cortisol symptoms that we talked about in the last episode, it may be helpful. Alright my friend, I hope that you found this episode helpful if you enjoyed this, I would love if you can take a moment to leave a rating or review on your favorite platform that would help me immensely to be able to find and reach more endowarriors out there. Even share with a friend who might enjoy this as well. That would mean the world to me.

Alyssa Chavez [00:25:52]:
I'm so thankful that you're here and you're listening and I hope that you're getting a lot out of this podcast. And that's all I have for today, my friend. I hope you have a wonderful day. Be sure to get yourself some rest. You're worth it. You deserve it. You have more than earned that rest, my friend. All right, take care.

Alyssa Chavez [00:26:13]:
We'll talk soon.