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STRESS – part 3

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Chronic Stress Part III : Solutions
Today’s post is full of butterflies, kittens🐱, and unicorns (Literally!). That’s a welcome change, I’m sure, considering the sobering long term ramifications of unmitigated chronic stress we’ve talked about these past few weeks. Chronic stress usually creeps in on very soft feet, so consider taking a few minutes to answer this simple yes/no “day to day stress assessment”:

stress assessment

 

Coping with stress involves two steps:
1️⃣Recognizing the signs and symptoms of EARLY burnout and stress (you’ve got the tools now!)
2️⃣Activating any or all of the self care tools below. 
Now, here’s the fun part….. Giving yourself some self care time by mixing and matching ways to “de-stress” on the regular. This is not a “once and done” experience. These are lifestyle changes for life!
🙌Stressbuster Options🙌
👉Get regular exercise! 
👉Engage in self care activities (ex: a long soaking bath or a massage)
👉Prayer, meditation, and/or quiet time with no electronic or television distractions
👉Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (aka CBT) . This can be a very valuable tool, especially if you find yourself trending in negative thinking patterns. I would really recommend picking up Dr. Caroline Leaf’s book and workbook, “Who Switched Off My Brain? Controlling toxic thoughts and emotions” to begin diving deeper into this subject.
👉Journal. Write out your thoughts instead of letting them fester in your mind. Create a gratitude journal, write a letter you’ll never send to someone, or begin success journaling)
👉Turn off social media and electronics as often as your day allows.
👉Limit scrolling time  
👉Get outside as much as possible and connect with nature. Go barefoot or get your hands on plants and in soil. (Grounding! ….. We’ve talked about this in previous posts)
👉Read something relaxing and nontriggering (ex: a work of fiction). Allow your brain to wander within the pages of the book.
👉Engage in Yoga, pilates, Tai Chi (soooo many health benefits!)
👉Practice breathing exercises ( left nostril breathing or box breathing are both excellent breathing patterns to quiet the mind)
Improve your sleep in both quality and quantity (we talked about that last week)
👉Try salt water floatation therapy for deep relaxation
👉Listen to 432 Hz frequency healing music ( check out the company WholeTones for more info!)
👉Laugh! It releases endorphins.
👉Spend time with a pet. Did you know that a cat’s purring frequency corresponds with established healing frequencies in therapeutic medicine for humans? 
👉Practice saying no to the things that bring stress, and saying yes to the things that will bring joy.
👉Avoid procrastination and just do the thing. Learn time management techniques and goal setting.
👉Eat healthy nourishing foods
👉Engage in a hobby
👉Connect with actual people in a community….. In person. We are not created to be an island.
👉Examine your values and beliefs and then live by them. An enormous amount of internal stress comes from living differently from your beliefs and values. 
👉Oils and Supplements. We have so many amazing tools to help us navigate stress:
🌿Lavender, Vetiver (Yes, it doesn’t smell great, so apply to bottoms of feet!), Bergamot, Roman Chamomile, Frankincense,  Sandalwood, Ylang Ylang, Orange, and Geranium are just a few oils known for their calming qualities.
🌿Young Living has created an amazing array of perfectly blended oils to help add to the peace and tranquility in our lives: StressAway, Tranquil, RutaVala, Peace and Calming, and Valor are just a few that come to mind. 
🌿An herb called Ashwagandha is known for its beautiful ability to lower symptoms of stress in the body. It is one of the important ingredients in Young Living’s EndoGize (typically for women) and PowerGize (formulated for men).
🌿Young Living’s Calm CBD Roll-on is another fantastic tool to help relax and quiet the mind. Have you tried it yet? Be sure to find and follow Dr. Oliver Wenker MD, DEAA, ABAARM, FAARFM, MBA on his website and social media to learn in depth information on all things CBD.  


Unfortunately, many doctors don’t recommend steps to help mitigate stress in a patient’s life. Nearly 20% of adults age 18 or older are on medication💊 for symptoms related to stress.  A patient may present with anxiety, depression, or any of the other stress related clues we’ve talked about, and a prescription is written without any further discussion (and often, without comprehensive lab work being ordered to ensure there’s not also an imbalance somewhere in the body causing the symptoms). There will always be a time and a place for medication as a final option, but patients need to be fully aware of the problems that lie with using medication long term as a coping mechanism. 
💊Many of the medications used to treat symptoms of stress are highly addictive. Additionally, these medications have the capacity to impact brain function when taken over extended periods of time.
💊According to a study published in 2010 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, one of the most common classes of drugs (SSRI’s)  used to treat mild to moderate anxiety and depression was “unable to outperform placebos for moderate symptoms of depression”. So…. there’s that.
💊All of the medications used to mediate stress symptoms have side effect profiles that may well require a 2nd or 3rd medication to help manage the side effects of the initial medication.
💊Very few studies on the effects of a polypharmacy (using multiple medications concurrently)  lifestyle exist, yet we know that prescription drugs are the 3rd leading cause of death in the USA (after heart disease and cancer)…… (Don’t let anyone tell you that essential oils and herbs are dangerous!😉).
💊There is no way of measuring serotonin (the primary “happy”  neurotransmitter) in the brain of a living person, nor is there a “normal level” of serotonin we should all have to be emotionally healthy. People with high serotonin levels can still be depressed, and people with low serotonin levels can still be happy and joy filled. Indeed, we are largely the masters of our own emotional state.
💊Many medications used to treat symptoms of stress should be used in caution with people who have preexisting extreme mood disorders, diabetes, kidney, liver, or heart disease, or pregnancy (due to risk of miscarriage, congenital heart disease, or persistent pulmonary hypertension of the baby).


We have so many low cost (to free!) tools available to us when it comes to how we choose to deal with stress, and as you’ve hopefully seen, most are very pleasant options with no icky side effects.
Use the two stress surveys📊 you now have on hand to check yourself periodically, and then evaluate your self care / fun quotient. Your future self will thank you! 
xoxo~ liz

#sharingiscaring 
#beingwellinformedisgoodmedicine
#ThanksYL 
#fearfullywonderfullyjoyfullymade 
(PS: if anyone needs a stress relieving kitten, I’ve got 4 fosters looking for a home! )

Essential Oils Support Wellness

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Aside from leading people to Jesus, is there anything more important to give as a gift 🌲🎁than something that encourages health and wellness? 
If you are wanting to improve someone’s wellbeing this Christmas, let me help you with your “hard to shop for” people. 
I offer a free health coaching call with all new Young Living accounts using the link below. Nobody walks alone (unless they choose to😉). 
(And 30% off  many of our favortites thru 11:59pm MST Nov 28th??…. yes please!!)
xoxo~ liz 

shop essential oils

Assessing Stress – part 1

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Alrighty friends, we are going to tackle a booger bear over the next few weeks. Stress is a stealth burglar of health. It can creep up on you, knock you to your knees and follow up with a sucker punch in the gut before you even knew what hit ya. Nobody is immune to the negative influences of unmitigated chronic stress. Oftentimes, we can get so caught up living with stress, it begins to “feel” normal.
God did not design us to live in eternal “fight or flight”. If we do live this way, eventually a health crisis will occur. The Holmes-Rahe Stress Inventory Survey📊 is a widely recognized health coaching tool used to help assess the probability of future “health breakdowns” if stress remains unaddressed.

Holmes-rahe stress inventory survey

Take some time to honestly assess yourself. 
👍150 points or less: a relatively low susceptibility to stress induced health problems
150-300 points: (if nothing changes) a 50% chance of a stress induced health concern in the next 2 years.
300: an 80% risk of a stress induced health concern within the next 2 years.
Frankly, assessing your stress load (and how well you mediate it) just might be the most important clue🔎 of this series.
I’ll be unpacking additional clues and ways to mediate chronic stress next week. Thankfully, stress management is not an expensive undertaking… there is so much you can do affordably or for free. The hardest part is honestly acknowledging the damage stress may be causing behind the scenes. What you can’t see is still causing harm.  Some studies  suggest chronic stress is as hard on the heart as a five🚬🚬🚬🚬🚬 cigarette a day habit. Yikes!😳
See ya’ll next week. I’m headed off to bulk order Stress Away!😉
xoxo~ liz
www.goodmedicine.info
#sharingiscaring 
#relaxingisgoodmedicine 
#learningtoletgo 
#ThanksYL

Health Clues from Your Eyes -part 5

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*Iris clues. Are you ready to dive a little deeper down this fascinating rabbit warren of information? If you are just now joining in this portion of detective work, I’d highly suggest a quick look at last week’s post before proceeding-Health Clues from Your Eyes – part 4.


🔎Noting the changes within your eyes may be likened to the notification lights on the dashboard of your car. If you know something is wrong early enough, you often have time to correct that which is setting the signal off.  The iris manifests clues marking changes within the body that warrant correction.


Depending upon how the clues manifest themselves, they may indicate acute, recovery, chronic, or degenerative situations within the body.


Acute – active inflammation. During this time, the body is using its resources rapidly in an attempt to gain control of the inflammation. The iris “warning signs” will look like white ribbons in the areas corresponding to the inflamed tissue. Other corroborative clues may include noticeable mucus production somewhere in the body, or visibly inflamed or swollen tissue. Detoxification is occurring, but often it’s not fast enough. Consider giving your body all the nutrition support you can. Add in Young Living’s Master Formula and NingXia Red for added support. 


Sub-Acute- Once the initial rapid inflammation has tapered off, the white ribbon like areas start to become darker. This is suggestive that nutrients have been depleted and need to be restored. If a sub-acute state is left unattended and the body continues to be exposed to either nutritional or physical stress, a chronic state of inflammation may result. Don’t stop supporting your body! 


Chronic- In this state, toxins and waste are not eliminated properly, cellular activity has slowed down considerably, nerve impulses are impaired, and conditions become ripe for chronic illness or dis-ease to set in. The iris will manifest the chronic condition state with the appearance of various sized “black holes” in the netting of the iris fibers. This will ultimately lead to further degeneration if positive changes are not made to a person’s lifestyle in an effort to reverse the course of dis-ease or illness. The black holes may get larger and multiply as more body systems are affected. 


*About ⅓ of the way away from the iris lies the autonomic nerve wreath. The autonomic nervous system is broken down into two subsystems. The parasympathetic nervous system is for basic housekeeping within the body and it controls the body while we rest. The sympathetic system is also commonly referred to as our “fight or flight” response. The nerve wreath is not always uniform in shape.. The more this wreath shape deviates from a standard roundish type shape, the more suggestive it is of a system off balance. Additionally, the color of the autonomic nerve wreath should match the color of the rest of the iris. Any increase, decrease, or change in color in this area suggests disharmony within the body. To recap, color and shape of the wreath are important clues🔎!


What about colored spots within the iris? These are called psora, and are typically considered to be an indicator of toxin loads within the body. If you watch your eyes closely, you may notice that these colored spots often change locations over time. This suggests the toxin load (including drug deposits) has moved to another portion of the body. Sometimes these spots show up in different colors: red yellow, and orange are not uncommon. They are most often seen in Zones 1 thru 3 in the irises.
“Scurf rim”🔎 is another clue on the outermost zone (7) of the iris. Is the area darkened? This is suggestive that the skin (remember, it’s an organ!) is not able to function effectively in the detoxification process, and toxins and metabolic waste are having a hard time being released from the body. An accompanying clue🔎 might include not sweating easily.


At the very top of Zone 7 (roughly 10pm -2am on a clock) look for an arc that often has fuzzy edges with a whitish tint. Though this used to be a mark of old age👵, it is becoming more and more common in younger people👩👨. Presence of this arc is suggestive of poor oxygenation and blood perfusion in the brain.


Now look for a solid white ring🔎 on the periphery of Zone 7. This suggests a chemical imbalance of some sort in the body. Western medicine also recognizes this ring as an indicator of probable excessive cholesterol and triglycerides in the body. Not surprisingly, further digging (with lab work and testing) often reveal poor calcium metabolism which contributes to plaque in the arteries (arteriosclerosis) and joints (arthritis), and subsequent higher blood pressure.


Zone 6 sometimes houses cloudlike spots 🔎resembling a string of pearls. If the spots are very white, these spots suggest acute inflammation. Yellowed or brownish pearls suggest that the inflammation has moved to a chronic state.

Check yourself for other clues. Do you also produce a great deal of mucus elsewhere in your body or have swollen lymph glands? Dry brushing, lymphatic massage, and regular exercise are all excellent ways to mediate impaired lymphatic function. 


Nerve rings🔎 may appear anywhere in the pupil.. They look much like growth rings found in a cross section of a tree. These rings suggest long term stress in one or more parts of the body, and are most often seen in chronically stressed individuals. Shouldn’t we all be huffing our Stress Away whenever the moment requires it? We have so many blessed tools at our fingertips to help support our bodies during times of stress. These nerve rings are similar to an SOS smoke signal. Pay attention to them! 


Check your eyes for dark lines 🔎radiating out from the pupil. These lines (called radii solaris) suggest a slower moving digestive tract and a subsequent toxin load. If you are not offloading the poo my friends, the toxin load will be there. ! This clue might also be suggestive of a parasite load.


We’ve just barely skimmed the surface of the clues🔎 the eyes can give us, but if you’re ultra curious, keep digging on your own. Dr Bernard Jensen is considered to be the modern “Father of Iridology”, and his work is an excellent place to start!
I’ll leave you with this cool factoid…. Did you know that you may be able to change the color of your eyes? Brown discolorations in blue/green eyes are suggestive of digestive system dysfunction, a gallbladder weakness, or liver dysfunction. Cleaning up these problems with clean eating habits and restoring health to the digestive system just might make your brownish eyes blue! The next time you think someone might be full of it💩, check their eyes…. You just might be right!😉


 xoxo~ liz

#sharingiscaring
#supportyourlocalpeepers
#goodmedicine
#ToxinFreeIsTheWayToBe
#goodmedicineisproactiveinsteadofreactive
#ThanksYL

Health Clues from Our Eyes – part 4

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Eye Clues Part IV: What do your irises say about your overall health?
Perhaps you’ve heard the phrase, “The more you learn, the more you realize you don’t know.” It’s one of the reasons I identify as a lifetime student. I pray that I am able to learn something new every day. This next foray into clue finding required diving a little deeper into a topic I’m fascinated by, but certainly no expert!
The iris is the part of the eye that carries color. Iridology is a form of “clue finding” in which patterns, colors, and other characteristics of the fibers of the iris are examined. Just as with feet,✋ hands, 👂ears, 😛tongue, 👩face, and skin… the iris is loaded with body health clues🔎! The eye itself is a visible extension of the brain with hundreds of thousands of nerve endings, a vast microvascular network, muscles, and other tissue types. Interestingly, the iris is connected to every organ and tissue of the body by way of its role in the central nervous system. The iris is also controlled by sympathetic (“fight or flight” response) and parasympathetic (basic body “housekeeping” and autopilot “at rest” activities), so if you imagine that trauma, drama, or a toxin load might affect affect the iris, you’d be right! Nerve fibers in the iris respond to changes in body tissue. As the changes in the body tissue occur, those changes also physically manifest in the portion of the iris which “identifies” with that portion of the body tissue. The result is this: the color part of our peepers drop clues relating to past, present, and possibly future health. Even having a basic understanding of clues🔎 within the iris may help you identify how best to support and care for your body by suggesting where inflammation may be, and at what stage it may be manifesting.
*There are 90 known body specific areas that are mapped on each iris. Each eye is different. These areas are mapped out much like spokes on a wagon wheel, with the pupil being at the center axis. There are also 7 concentric zones of the iris beginning at the pupil. The stomach and intestines are closest to the pupil, followed by:
Zone 3: representing heart, bronchi, pancreas, adrenal, pituitary, pineal, gallbladder
Zone 4: representing prostate or uterus , skeleton
Zone 5: representing brain, lung, liver, spleen, kidneys, thyroid
Zone 6: representing muscles, motor nerves, lymphatic, circulatory
Zone 7: representing skin, sensory nerves
Today, we’re only going to talk about the overall appearance of the iris. Compare the “texture” of the iris to a piece of cloth. Does it appear tightly woven like silk or more loosely woven together like burlap or cheesecloth? There is a correlation between the “tightness” of the fibers of the iris with the body’s ability to hold and utilize nutrients, dispose of metabolic waste and toxins, and have general robust cellular activity. More “loosely woven” iris fibers trend towards a correlation with difficulty maintaining nutrient levels and efficiently disposing of metabolic waste and toxins.
This may be a valuable clue to note in your health🔎 detective journal. Remember, clues are not diagnoses….. they are a gift from our Creator so that we may notice changes and work towards achieving better health…. a constant & evolving process. Sometimes it may feel like two steps forward and three steps back. #metoo. We all have our own health journey with seasons of success and seasons of lack, with lots of moving parts that we can choose to control or leave to chance. Scientists👩‍🔬 and doctors👨‍🔬 who have studied the iris closely have found that irises which suggest a weaker constitution can belong to healthy people who take care of themselves well. Likewise, irises suggesting a strong constitution of the body can also be made weak over time through toxin exposure and lack of care. Epigenetics (the environmental component of gene expression that we CAN control) plays a tremendous role in our health!
If you are so inclined, grab a magnifying glass, light and mirror (partnering up may be easier) and happy clue hunting! . Make note of what you see compared to how you feel overall, and how you might be feeling if you weren’t taking care of yourself in “all the ways”.
I know I would feel much different if I weren’t faithful with my eating and exercise habits, self care routine, and of course….my daily supplement routine: Sulfurzyme, BLM, Thyromin, Femigen/Progessence Plus, OmegaGize, NingXia Red, Multigreens, and others on board!
We’ll dive just a little deeper next week!
xoxo~ liz

#sharingiscaring

#supportyourlocalpeepers
#goodmedicine
#goodmedicineisproactiveinsteadofreactive
#ThanksYL
#youareworthit

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