#090 Mood Myths: How to heal overlooked causes of cravings, brain, mood & memory problems

Feeling fatigued? 

Is it because of that glass of wine you drank last night or is it something more serious?

In this podcast episode of the Less Stressed Life, the founder of Thriving Force, Dr. Sara DeFrancesco shares her experiences and realizations on

• How gluten sensitivity affects our brain health
• Our overall well-being and how it gets affected by cortisol and adrenals
• The effects of our thoughts on the neurotransmitters and hormones in our body
• Tips on how to put yourself in a parasympathetic "rest and heal" mode 

Dr. Sara DeFrancesco is a holistic, root cause Naturopathic Doctor, Licensed Acupuncturist, and the founder of Thriving Force, an investigative medicine clinic that specializes in digestive, immune, and brain health problems. Dr. DeFrancesco helps people turn their brain and health back on by healing root cause metabolic problems (like overlooked inflammatory triggers, stealth infections, and nutritional deficiencies) combined with holistic neuroscience so you can heal the cause of what is preventing you from being well. 

Using the synergy of holistic medicine, functional medicine testing, neuroscience, and mind-body medicine Dr. DeFrancesco partners with patients to heal digestive problems, fatigue, insomnia, anxiety, depression, brain fog, memory problems, and autoimmune-neurological conditions. This approach focuses on investigating and identifying the root cause of your health problems to remove obstacles to healing and correct imbalances, allowing dysfunctional systems to heal.

Datis Kharrazian https://kharrazianinstitute.com/

Dr. Joe Dispenza https://drjoedispenza.com/

The 3 Step Strategy To Heal Digestive, Mood, & Memory Problems: https://thrivingforce.com/gut-brain-guide

Website - https://thrivingforce.com/

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Transcript

spk_0:   0:00
you may not feel stressed out, but with his brain and balance, it can really bring too much cortisol into the system and at another way that we can have that adrenaline hormone disorder.

spk_1:   0:10
Welcome to the less stressed life podcast. This is your host, Krista Bigler. Private practice, Integrated in nutritionist helping people across the U. S. Reverse digestive issues, eczema and auto immunity. Be a phone and video consult toe. Learn more. Visit less stressed nutrition dot com Now onto the show Okay, today on the less stress life we have a doctor, Sarah DiFrancesco, who is a holistic root cause, naturopathic doctor, licensed acupuncturist and the founder of Thriving Force, an investigative medical clinic that specializes in digestive, immune and brain health problems. Dr. Sarah helps people turn their brain and health back on by healing Kaz metabolic problems like overlooked inflammatory triggers, self infections and nutritional deficiencies. Combined with holistic neuroscience, you can feel the cause of what's preventing you from being well using the synergy of holistic medicine, functional medicine testing in neuroscience and mind body medicine. Dr Sarah partners with patients to kill digestive problems, fatigue, insomnia, anxiety, depression, brain fog, memory problems in autoimmune neurological conditions. This approach focuses on investigating identifying causes to remove those obstacles and healing and correcting imbalances and allowing the systems to hell. Welcome, Dr Sarah.

spk_0:   1:23
Thank you. So wonderful to be here. Thanks for having me.

spk_1:   1:26
Yeah, s o I met you at a little event in Portland. I was there for hormone conference and you were telling me how you really love this area with helping people with brain and anxiety and what's going on there. But you have a personal history. So let's talk about that. Because as I was telling you off line when I started working with digestive issues, I was unprepared for the amount of anxiety I encountered in practice because of got brain connection things. But you take that many, many steps further, and so I'm excited for you and enlighten us. But first, let's talk about you and how this became really interesting to you.

spk_0:   1:59
Yeah. Thank you. So, you know, first I like to preface this with I'm sort of the classic case study and anxiety. And also, if you're listening to this, you might resonate with a lot of this. It might be true for you, but you also have your own journey. So just keep in mind that the whole point is to find out what is causing anxiety for you and really finding out what is the cause in dealing with that, instead of just trying to manage it, whether that's with medications or supplements or herbs. So my personal journey is that, you know, I have a long family history on one side of my family, of anxiety and panic attacks, and when I was in medical school, I began to experience anxiety and panic attacks, and I was in my mid twenties. I was MENA passing it much, much earlier than anyone in my family previously hot, probably because of all the stress and we'll get into that. That was happening during medical school, and I was surrounded by some of the best, you know, nature, path of doctors in the city, as my teachers and in my community, and they really tried to help me through this. But there was a lot that really got overlooked, and so that's what I want to tell you guys about today because there's some very simple things, and then there's some off the beaten track type of things that are really important to assess if you're someone dealing with anxiety or if you're someone who is working with clients or patients to help them with anxiety. So for me, I went into medical school relatively healthy and then started to manifest anxiety and panic attacks. I also experience weight gain. I also experience frequent colds and blues, which had never happened to me before. So there was something very wrong with my body, and I didn't know what it WAAS. And one of the first things that helped me was Thio identify that I actually had celiac disease and that, unfortunately, was overlooked by my doctors at the time. And I'm very grateful for all the help that they gave me. But this was overlooked. And so the approach was really Hey, let's give you some calming herbs. Let's use lavender. Let's use cav. Ah, some of you out there may have tried these things, and they do help. But I have this constant inflammatory fire that was going on because of the celiac disease, and I really needed to remove gluten from my diet. So that was step number one, and actually, for me, that was curative for the panic attacks. I never had panic attacks ever again. Six months later, I decided to see what would happen if I ate two pieces of bread and I woke up the next morning on Lee with anxiety. I had a panic attack for seemingly no reason, because even when I had my panic attacks, it usually would be a constellation of things. It would be that maybe it was sick. I didn't get enough sleep the night before and I had a big test or something stressful that would really set off my nervous system. So it was highly unusual for me, too, experience that just by eating two pieces of bread. So really confirmed for me after having that result for six months that this was really the issue. Now the other thing and this is commonly overlooked that happened is my balance was off. So I remember stumbling around the house, looking for my glasses, not being able to find them, and feeling sheer panic thinking like my career was over because I wasn't gonna make it to class on time. Highly unusual. And so if you have balance issues, that's also something to be aware of that. Gluten specifically, and inflammation really affects a part of your brain called the cerebellum. And so the cerebellum is what is being tested when someone is doing a drunk drivers test because the cerebellum is affected by alcohol before the rest of the brain. So that's why we test balance and all of those things but the cerebellum While it coordinates your movement, it also coordinates your emotion and thoughts through the limbic system and through your frontal lobe. So we will often see when people have inflammation or Sarah Beller disorders. And one of those is gluten sensitivity, or celiac disease that is causing inflammation specifically with the cerebellum. People can experience anxiety, panic attacks, even bipolar disorder schizophrenia, and one of the telltale symptoms is a loss of being able to balance correctly and feeling like you're stumbling around, which is called ataxia. So that was the number one for me, made a huge difference, but I had a lot of rain fog issues that were on going after the panic attacks resolved, and so in investigating this further for myself and working with my own practitioner because I think everyone should have a practitioner, Whether you're a doctor or not, we gotta have somebody who has that objective perspective and can really see what's going on with you from the outside for me. It was also because I have a history of a traumatic brain injury because of a horseback riding accident at the kid. So that brought me more into the neurology world and going, Hey, what's going on with my brain? And for me, there was a lot of my body was producing cortisol all the time. So in functional medicine, we talk about this as adrenal fatigue or your stress is too high. But if you've had a traumatic brain injury, or if you have brain imbalance with your autonomic nervous system, your brain, it will fire off. Court is all when it's not supposed to, so you may not feel stressed out, but with this brain imbalance, it can really bring too much cortisol into the system. And that's another way that we can have that adrenaline hormone disorder. So that was a big thing for me, and then the third thing was, I and I know that your audience is pretty savvy with got inflammation and intestinal permeability But something people don't realize is how many infections people tend to have. So I find parasites and bacteria that should not be there all the time in people, whether they have gut disorders or not. And this is massively affecting the brain. And so we know this. Even in conventional medicine, there's a very accepted in proven link between I B s and anxiety. And when the I B. S gets better, the anxiety gets better. And when he anxiety is treated also the EBS gets better. So that's our gut brain connection. So those are the three things that really changed the way that I live my life and that I also practice when I work with patients. 101

spk_1:   8:32
So I'm gonna recap. I'm gonna try to make sure I dressed these three things. So I have written down two and three, but one Do we consider number one being the seal act disease and how that created inflammation in the brain throwing off cerebellum, which also coordinated thoughts and can influence balances That be number one, would you say

spk_0:   8:49
Yeah, absolutely no, again, that's specific to me. So I know some people get very frustrated when they're like Oh, no, not another person saying Eliminate gluten. But yes, you have to consider if gluten is an issue because, especially for anxiety, it does specifically affect the cerebellum, which specifically contributor anxiety. So this is not another like blanket statement like just quick gluten. And everything will get better that there's a specific mechanism there.

spk_1:   9:14
Yeah, and I really appreciate that because we are kind of getting fatigued on that concept like it's very it could be a challenge for some people. It's very easy to do. For some people, it's challenging, and some people just aren't good at explaining some of the science there. It's like So anyway, some people are like very anti gluten. And some, in your case, 100% you needed to be gluten free because you have celiac disease. I am curious How select disease to got miss. Did you have a different types of symptoms that are not characteristic of celiac disease? Do not have abdominal pain. Many thoughts on that. How does someone know that this needs to be checking that this conversation is at a conference and I talked to a lab is kind of a consumer laboratory. Lyekka were always kind of skeptical of this, But we had the conversation and there was someone working there that I knew from a past life who had been an editor at a gluten magazine and had a lot of celiac history, etcetera. And so we just talked about how sometimes it's hard for people to get tested or their provider will not test them. So anyway, thoughts on that piece, Yeah,

spk_0:   10:05
so for me, the celiac disease, it does turn out. I was the 1st 1 to figure it out. But for me, actually, you know, runs in my family. So there's other people in my family who have confirmed that as well. But yeah, it got missed because I didn't present with any over digestive symptoms. Now, when I got off of gluten and improve my digestion and my nutrition and everything, my digestion did improve. But that was not one of my complaint. So often. People, either. They don't have any digestive symptoms at all. They have other manifestations. And, you know, if you're seeing on your blood work that your iron is low, there's a lot of nutritional deficiencies. Vitamin D deficiencies sometimes that can lead a provider to say, Hey, you know what? We should do a celiac disease test, but I didn't even have any of those things, and I had severe serve your brain manifestations of the celiac disease. But everyone was kind of bypassing that option because I didn't present with a digestive issue. And so I think that's a big pearl for everyone to know is just because you don't think there's something going on in your digestion doesn't mean there isn't something. And also, whether it's celiac disease or food sensitivities or you know what I think is more often the root cause is thes chronic infections that are causing the food sensitivities. You may not see it in your digestive system, but if you don't handle the digestive system, we can't make a meaningful impact on the immune system and also the nutrition that you're able to absorb and use in every cell of your body. So we have to think differently about fuel yak disease, I mean in gluten sensitivity, because the truth is that someone could have gluten sensitivity and have worse symptoms than someone else who actually has celiac disease. So always ask your doctor to get tested. If you're still eating gluten, you have to do it while you're still eating gluten. And even if your test comes back negative because there's a lot of false negatives, it's just not a very good test. Unfortunately, what we have right now, then still do a trial of 30 to 90 days with no gluten at all. And I do mean 100% Don't shoot the messenger. I do not make the rules, but sometimes people will tell me that there, like 99% gluten free, but they have a piece of bread once in a while. Or that they're just not checking their sauces for wheat ingredients. And the immune system needs absolute resolution to heal. And for those antibodies, Thio go down and for the tissue to repair.

spk_1:   12:34
I love that. Thank you for those pearls, and I couldn't agree more about the balance there and how this is sort of a chicken and the egg with food. Sensitivities like this is what's creating sometimes that right, the immune system inflammation for many reasons. So that's the celiac disease piece of your puzzle. So then there was the adrenal issues you mentioned that you had a traumatic brain injury from horseback riding. And so I'd like to talk a little bit about what manifest in the body when that happens, and then also, that's a trauma. So let's talk about just trauma in general and how that can affect what's going on. An anxiety like downstream, Long term. Sure. A piece, right? Like, yeah, she even realize that that was connected to your story. Is good detective like that's an intense detective work,

spk_0:   13:12
right? So this is a great question, a huge topic. And I'm so glad you asked that because, you know, first of all, what I want to say about anxiety just to back up is that if you're listening to this and you have anxiety first, I want you to know that it is absolutely possible for you to heal. And not only that this is actually a gift for you. You don't feel that way right now. I'm sure I certainly didn't. I remember feeling like every nerve in my body was on fire. I felt so embarrassed that my symptoms were out in the open. And honestly, I remember thinking I would have given anything tohave, digestive issues instead of anxiety, because I felt that only other classmates who were their healing themselves as well got toe have there. Problems happen with the bathroom door shut and mine were out in the open. So there's a lot of stigma around this that really this is not a psychiatric condition. So we were just talking People Resort recording about how anxiety is actually the most common quote unquote psychiatric disorder. And so there's 40 million Americans that are suffering from anxiety right now, and it's actually not psychiatric it all. There is no mental illness stigma that should go along with this, and in my opinion, any other quote unquote mental illness. They are mental illness is quote unquote are really just medical conditions that have brain manifestations. And so when we change that and we say it that way, it's like, Okay, like, this is another piece of my body that needs to hell. It's not me who I am as a person that there's something wrong with me. It's just my brain is inflamed or my brain doesn't have the right nutrients or neurotransmitters, and so anxiety. What I've seen is it's really a gift because probably if you're experiencing this, you are probably someone who is empathic, and you're probably someone who may even be intuitive. And that's part of why this inflammation manifest for you in this way, because your nervous system is highly sensitive and we need to take the inflammation off of it so that you can use it as the great tool to be the creator of your life, your lifestyle and your mission that you really are. So, first of all, I want you to know that now, getting to the adrenal and the TV I issue, you know, in functional medicine we're very focused on the adrenals, and we should be because people are dealing with way too much stress. And in my practice, I worked with a lot of retraining the brain through meditation through journaling through what I call good and gratitude. So every time someone comes in, I tell him, Hey, tell me three things that are good that are happening in your life and why you're grateful for them. And so we have to do this retraining of the brain because most inputs in our life are really negative. I mean, look at the news it's all negative. No one's covering the happy stories for the most part, right? And so the way our brain works, we're trying to see patterns so we see a negative pattern in the world because we're watching the news or who were surrounded by and all the complaining that's going on that were doing, participating and being exposed Thio. Then we start looking for negative factors and threats and our environment. And then we start living in that state of mind. And when we live in that state of mind, this is creating a cortisol response in our body all the time, and we cannot heal like that. So when we have court is all happening, we're literally in a state of breaking down the body instead of being able to heal and regenerate the body on a cellular level. So if there's one thing that you do today, please make time in your calendar to do something. You love to spend time with people that you love to go outside in nature and receive all its abundance and really take a look at the things that are stressing you out that do not feed you now. There's not really good stress and bad stress. It's how you feel about it. So if there's something in your life that stressful, but you feel that it's rewarding, you know, make it manageable for yourself, but keep going. But if there's things that are just raining, you please write yourself a permission slip to just let that go. All ready for you right now. Okay, here, Boom. You just got it. You have permission to let that go. So stress is a major issue. The adrenals are a major issue, but there's also this whole other brain component that is often overlooked in functional medicine. And so often it's not just the adrenals that we would keel with a doctor, genic herbs and nutrients, things like that. It's also the autonomic nervous system. Now the autonomic nervous system is what is telling us if we're in a rest and digest that Paris sympathetic healing mode or, if we're in are stressed out sympathetic, run from the lion Tiger bear. So that's your fight or flight mode. And so this is why we have to take a deep breath. We gotta go for walks in nature. We've gotta put our feet on the ground bare feet Because all of this, all of this put you into that Paris sympathetic rest and heal mode, and that is really overlooked. Now, in the case of the traumatic brain injury ZOLL, other situation. So if somebody has a traumatic brain injury, So if you hate your head and it does not matter if you lost if you did not lose consciousness, so losing consciousness could be worse, but not always. Also know if you hit your head. It doesn't always manifest with symptoms during that immediate time period. It can take 10 or 20 years later for these symptoms from the traumatic brain injury to manifest. And that's what happened to me. So I'll use my example. I got kicked by a horse when I was in eighth grade and I broke both sides of my jaw. So if you've broken your jaw, you definitely got hit hard enough that you should be checked out for a T. B I. And make sure that you're taking care of your brain. And what happens here is that when we have an injury like that to the brain, it starts what is called glial cell activation. So a glial cell is your most common brain tell. It's actually 90% of your brain cells. It's your immune brain cells and the neurons, which are what fire all the electrical impulses. That's what we're using. Well, I'm talking right now, right and thinking those air actually only 10%. So we used to think that. And this is the old neuroscience. The old neuroscience was that the glial cells are just glue that holds the neuron together, and the neurons are the only important part because that's the electrical impulse. But the truth is, is that the glial cells are what helping Iran's function there, what clean up debris and the brain, their what helped cells repair. And when you have a TV, I you get glial cell activation, and so this changes the glial cells into an inflammatory state where they can no longer do their job. And over time with other inflammatory insults or stressors on your body, this becomes worse and worse, so this can be very difficult if you're a practitioner, isn't educated about it to try to differentiate what is adrenal issues because it'll kind of look a little bit the same in terms of If you're someone whom, like you, miss a little sleep and then the next day you're totally wrecked. That sounds a lot like adrenal, but it could actually be that brain inflammation. So one of the telltale signs of this glial cell activation, which is, you know, I'm talking about a much higher level of brain inflammation than the average person who is dealing with a little brain fog. But they get a good night sleep, and they have their nutrition on point, and they feel better right away. So these air folks who we get them on a good nutrition plan and it's like everything just gets better. The person who has the glial cell activation. What's happening here is because they have this altered state of inflammation in the brain with a glial cells. Any small insult really wrecks them, so small insult could be a stressor missing sleep that night. Alcohol's a big one because it affects the brain so much so if you're someone who has a glass of wine or, you know, has a little bit of alcohol in the next day, you feel terribly hung over. It's more than just a liver issue, It may be actually a brain issue. So as you can see, there's a lot of areas here where in functional medicine, we would think liver or adrenal. But we really have Thio. Make sure that we're educating our practitioners a lot more about the brain. And, you know, Doctor two t's Kharrazi and is one of my mentors. He's absolutely, you know, one of the best to learn from. So if you're a practitioner listening, I highly recommend his training's. So we have to get smarter about when the issues actually the brain instead of the typical things that we would see in functional medicine.

spk_1:   21:44
So how did you arrive that this was a piece for you? So you started What? The celiac disease. Panic attacks go away. Then you realize that you've got some glial cell stuff going on with this traumatic brain injury. So then what did you do with that information fault One. How do you determine that? That's the issue to what do you do with that information? How do you start improving the situation?

spk_0:   22:02
Yeah, so for me and to back up just a little bit too, is so I actually pod parasite I had blastocyst ISS. So that's another important point. Is got health because in functional medicine, what we're doing is we're trying Thio create the healthiest metabolic system we can, and the things that that does for the brain is we have to give the brain the right nutrition, and we have to give the brain the right environment. But then functional neurology is actually stimulating the brain so you can't stimulate the brain with supplements. You have to do that with activity. And that's why it's so important that we stay active throughout our lives that we exercise, that we stimulate ourselves mentally. And I think that we have community and stimulate ourselves emotionally with that connection and then functional. Neurology is an entirely other type of medicine, so we do use some of it in my practice. And then I have a chiropractor who is a functional neurologist that I partner with on cases where that's necessary and so you can learn about functional neurology at IAC nerd dot organ will make sure that you have the link for that. Find someone in your area that if that interests you. So for me, with the brain inflammation is that the anxiety and panic attacks went away. But I still had extreme brain fatigue, so I would just be really wiped out after a day of patients and have a lot of difficulty just having the energy to finish my charts at night. There's a lot of computer work that happens in functional medicine that you guys don't see behind the scenes, and that was just feeling challenging. It just felt like way too much. And I would forget the next word in the sentence if I didn't take all my B vitamins and my Moto Conrail support and all of that and that slow neuron firing. That's what that is. But for me, because of the history of the traumatic brain injury. That's why I knew that there was really glial cells activation, and I definitely was one of those people where it's like if I had a single glass of wine, uh, like no way. And I always thought that was my liver before I just thought, Oh, my liver is overwhelmed and I have to work on that And so I had to learned the hard way about that. So what I changed was I addressed the guy got rid of the infections. I did completely eliminate alcohol, and I actually I did test this. My neighbors had me over for a glass of wine and I enjoyed it. And I did great the next day. So I was like, That's cool. My glial cells are doing better for me. I personally choose to not make that a habit because of my traumatic brain injury history. But it was good to see that that had improved and for the functional neurology part, actually worked for the Function neurologist. And so we did all of these physical exams to find out where my brain was functioning really well and where it was not. And then we actually created physical therapy for the brain. And that's what punctual neurology does. So really marrying that functional medicine piece of making sure the inflammation is reduced healing that gut brain connection. I mean, some very, very simple things that people at home listening can do to stimulate your brain is to do breathing exercises. Because this vagus nerve, which I'm sure you talked about with your audience that connects our brain to the gut it goes down the front of our throat. And so this is why, in every culture that has meditation or some type of movement, like yoga or CI gong, the breath is always involved because the breath is the fastest way for you to regulate your nervous system and then overall, with interesting about the nervous system is you can change it in a moment just like that, because you can affect it with your breath. You can affect it by going outside, taking your shoes off and putting your feet on the grown and breathing deeply getting that electron exchange with your feet. You can change it by changing your thoughts. So when we are in a high court is all state of mind. We can't actually make new decisions. And so if we wake up and we have the same thoughts and the same fears and the same pattern, and we really have Thio take the time to break that. Another resource that I found so helpful has been Dr Joe Dispenses book that his training that his meditation and the truth is that we really can affect our neuro transmitters and her hormones just by changing our thoughts and by doing this work so there's a lot to go over there. And then what I don't want to miss out on saying to is that You know, there's really simple things involved here with anxiety as well, because a lot of times what I see is it a blood sugar. Dis regulations of people come in with anxiety and insomnia. And if you're not sleeping well, that's gonna throw off your blood sugar the next day. Could it cause you to have carb cravings? And then you guys are all probably know because you've heard it ad nauseum from conventional sources that insulin is there to remove blood sugar from the system and put it into the cells. But then what nobody ever tells you is if your blood sugar drops too low. Guess what is there to save the day Cortisol will spike so often. People are on this stressed out having insomnia. Then that leads to blood sugar problems during the day. And then we have this blood sugar, just regulation, which is exacerbating that court is all stress. It's like, Gosh, just saying that doesn't make you all just want to take a deep breath right now. It's like,

spk_1:   27:24
Oh, Yeah, So there's

spk_0:   27:27
a lot going on, and it's like we just need to disrupt this. And I think we need to disrupt it In having community, we need to disrupt this and you guys knowing that there's nothing wrong with you. There's just something that your body is having a challenge with, and it's all related. It's all tied together, and the first thing you can do is schedule your fun, take a deep breath, do all the things that I'm sure have been talked about in this podcast. A lot. Take care of your gut, take care of your nutrition. But also we have to really learn to stimulate the brain. And we have to recognize what's different than the common stuff because the brain has kind of been ignored. But now it's really coming to the forefront is really exciting to see all the amazing things that punctual medicine is doing for the brain, and that there's an entirely new frontier on how we can care for ourselves, for our cognition, for mood, for memory and all of that.

spk_1:   28:21
That's exciting. It's when you mentioned this high quarters. All can't make decisions, wake up the same it reminds me of like rewinding a tape and just playing it over and over and over. And so that becomes your new normal and you start to identify with that and you're suggesting that you have to break the tape so you can have a normal and kind of create a new story essentially so that we can build new nervous system. Pathways were really just change the nervous system kind of suddenly. I mean, this happens slowly, though, because really brain cells where glial cells are damaged. I mean, as you said, it could take years to show up, and you also mentioned that this is brain fatigue. But I bet this can also present as other things I bet it can present is chronic pain or headaches and things like that as well.

spk_0:   29:02
Absolutely, because chronic pain and headaches are often a problem with the feedback loop of the brain and the pain response. So sometimes, even after that tissue, the area of the pain is healed. There's still this pain loop that's continuing with the brain, and so we have to break that as well. And so I want to go back to what you said, though Because you're right, it's not just a tape. It's literally a neuro pathway in your brain, so you have a neuro pathway for your stressful co worker on. You also have one for all the things in your life that you're grateful for. But this dress will. Co worker path is setting off your cortisol on wrecking your health. And every time you complain about him or her, it's wrecking girl. And so we actually have to shift this over. And now this does not mean by the way, that it's all rainbows and unicorns and that you never get it. Oh, opinions or feel down, this is real life. So it's not about like, Oh, everything's perfect And I really don't like the good vibes only thing, because I think that's a little toxic. It's like, Hey, we all experience a range of emotions, but we just have to be able to bring ourselves back from that. We need to really make sure that we're not dwelling in a place that's gonna hurt ourself in others in our thoughts, because that's what it's doing and so we can actually build new neural pathways. So I remember, you know, when I was a kid. Maybe I'm dating myself a little bit here, but we were always told, Oh, you can't build new brain cells and does. That's actually not true. We can build new connection, and the neuron that die will try to reach out and ranch around that neuron to make a new pathway. So this is why it's so important that you're engaging in everything that is its highest good for you because your training your brain to appreciate that your training your brain to focus on that and you're actually changing your neuro transmitters and your hormones to feel a certain way. So let's train them to feel great. Let's train them to feel grateful. It's trained them to feel abundant. Now, the other piece of this and this is a functional medicine piece is we have tohave the proteins and the amino acids to be able to actually build those neurotransmitters for happiness. So we have to have the right nutrition and all of that stuff, and what are you gonna do with it? So sometimes the last people you know what you're gonna do when you get well, A new patient this week shared that they're in a beautiful marriage, and it took them a long time to find this person. And they just want to enjoy every moment that they can with this person for the rest of their life. Now, that is a beautiful purpose. And so we have to really focus on that, because that's what brings us through, like gluten free of pain. Yeah, sure it is. But who cares if you're spending your life with your soul mate? Glue. Breathe easy.

spk_1:   31:53
I love how you, like bridged the science and the emotions on the real life here is really good. So I'm gonna recap the three steps which for you was realizing that you had inflammation from some food you were eating that was overlooked because you don't have that classical signs. And the second piece was really digging in to realize that this traumatic brain injury you have from being kicked by a horse in the jaw when you were in eighth grade was manifesting later through brain fatigue like just exhausted brain, which is I can't tell you how I find that that would be a challenge, I think for most people to discover so and there's a lot of pieces of that. And then the last thing was really self infections, which you talked about but also didn't talk about a 10. And so I just didn't mention that. I mean, I see this is a big piece all the time, and it's not getting really discussed as often as it should, right? There's other things that take the limelight when we think about God, health or thinking about other pieces of health. But infections or imbalances or over gross are really a significant problem. And those things have their own life cycle that little organisms have their own life cycle. And so the waste that they give off can lead to foggy brain, etcetera as well. So those were some pieces for you. But then we also went over the nervous system and the parasympathetic versus Thesing pathetic nervous system. And how getting into that rest and digest It is so important because so many people are in fight and flight mode so commonly in long term, and when that happens, that becomes an adrenal issue. But it's not just adrenal issues, which can also look like a brain issue, which is maybe, like I didn't get enough sleep or what? Not really, Rex. You're something like that. So I'm just trying to recap all the pieces here and how they all fit together because I think it's so important. I think everything you just shared was incredible. And I could see a person saying, Oh, my gosh, that was awesome. That was me. Where do I start? We're gonna start. If that's Sarah story, Dr Sarah Story, but not exactly my story. So where did this person Let

spk_0:   33:36
me tell you exactly where you start. So let me recap it really short in the order that I would do it in my clinic. So first things first, we got to get your nutrition and your lifestyle and by lifestyle, First of all, I mean your stress. And so we talked a lot about that. We gotta get nutrition lifestyle going because for so many people, just balancing the blood sugar will really help them with both the insomnia and the anxiety and all three. The anxiety of the insomnia and the blood sugar issue. They're like the terrible triad there, like all feeding off of each other. So if you can address all three or you can a, you know, address one really well. The others are going to improve, and then next definitely. I always d'oh digestive health panel toe. Look for infections because so many people have them in medical school, I was told. Oh, no, no, you don't need to do that because people will have really obvious histories of like having traveler's diarrhea or getting really sick. And they'll tell you that's not true anymore, because we eat food from all over the world. The average American eats three meals a week at home. That's it. So we're reliant a lot on others handling our food, how it's prepared, how it got there, and hopefully it was stored properly, and our immune systems are running into bacterium pathogens all the time. They should be robust enough to deal with it, and we shouldn't get these infections. But most people are so stressed, their stomach acid is low, their immune system is down and then we're gonna have some health infections. So we have to deal with that because the infections in the gut again, if we don't deal with the gut, we can't deal with the nutrition properly, and we can't deal with the immune system properly. And then we're gonna have a really hard time if we don't deal with that dealing with hormones adrenal hi roid sex hormones. And we're gonna have a really hard time getting the brain, the proteins, amino acids that it needs to actually produce the neuro transmitters. So getting through all of that and then it's like, Okay, does the brain have the right? Nutrients are their brain regions that are a problem. So we talked about cerebellum. Another one that I see very commonly is a frontal lobe. It's the biggest lobe in your brain, and it has to do with your executive function. So your ability to make plans and execute those plans and be the thoughtful human that you are, it's actually what makes us human because we have such a big frontal lobe. And then also we get all wrapped up. I think sometimes in the neuro transmitters, and that's very important. But sometimes we just need to supply the right nutrition and take the inflammation off and take the stress off, and then the brain will actually make it's the correct neurotransmitters, and that's again, we're the meditation and the mindfulness and being aware of our thoughts piece comes on because we can actually signal to create the right neural transmitters just by changing our thought. So when you put all of that together now we have this very comprehensive continuum of how we can heal our bodies. We can heal anxiety, and we can live our best lives because you're gonna be feeling awesome. Having done all of this stuff,

spk_1:   36:30
I love it. It's so, so good. Thank you so much, Sara. So we talked about blood sugar, sleep, nutrient efficiencies. You did a beautiful job recapping here that you have to start with nutrition, lifestyle and stress. You look at your what's going on with your digestive system and then looking at trains from brain perspective on what's going on there. You did such a good job over viewing so many things today. If you could leave people with kind of one thing. Was your gut reaction on what you want to leave people with That helps take them into the next air, helps improve their life immediately. What would that be?

spk_0:   36:58
That's caring for your nervous system so we can change the nervous system in an instant, you have the power to do it with your breath. You have the power to do it with your behavior. And also we can do that with simple supplements like magnesium, making sure you have your B vitamins, making sure you have enough iron. Iron deficiency can also be a trigger for anxiety. And then we can also use some herbs like Google area Lecter of Flora, which is commonly called skullcap camomile lavender. So all of those things are tools to shift in the moment because you're gonna need that momentary shift to do the deep work. But make sure you're doing both and really, really care for yourself and know that, yes, some of these things take some time and you will need to put the work in. But also, if you pay attention to your nervous system, then you can change your health in an instant.

spk_1:   37:54
Working people find you online. You

spk_0:   37:56
can find me at driving force dot com, and soon you will be able Thio. Find me at dr DiFrancesco dot com. That's d e R D e f r a N C E s c o dot com, and I am currently working with patients in Portland, Oregon, as well as a small amount of clients. Long distance. So you guys can come hang out with me there or find me on Instagram, and we'll link that for you.

spk_1:   38:23
Thanks so much. One of the best gift you could give us at the less stress life is your feedback. We are paid in podcast reviews. If you enjoyed this or any other episode, please leave us a review in the iTunes store or from your podcast app. Just search for less dressed life as if you're not already subscribed. Click on the banana face image scroll to the bottom, where it shows the text of other reviews and write a review while you're there. Hey, make sure you hit Subscribe for Android or stitcher users. You gotta go to the desktop site and search for less dress life and then scroll down to leave a review. Stitcher doesn't load Apple reviews on their site, so if you want, you can leave a review in both places. Your feedback means a lot to the success of the show. Thanks so much for taking the time to do that. You rock