I was cited on a BIG podcast

I am so excited! I was associated with one of my favorite biology superstars on a big podcast!

One of my favorite authors and Instagram influencers to follow right now is Jessie Inchauspé, a French biochemist who started the Instagram page @glucosegodess. Jessie has two books out:

•  Glucose Revolution: The Life-Changing of Power of Balancing Your Blood Sugar

• The Glucose Goddess Method: The 4-Week Guide to Cutting Cravings, Getting Your Energy Back, and Feeling Amazing

 Both of these books make stabilizing your blood glucose achievable without restricting your favorite foods. On April 20, 2023, she was interviewed by Dhru Purohit of the Dhru Purohit Podcast. During the interview, Dhru asked how stabilizing blood glucose can impact mental health and whether Jessie knew of my work.

 Dhru interviewed me on The Broken Brain Podcast back in 2021 when my workbook Fuel Your Brain, Not Your Anxiety was released. Jessie did not know of my workbook (I am not disappointed, but I would love someday to meet with her or interview her).  

Both of us use continuous glucose monitors to understand how glucose affects how we feel. I don’t think it is necessary to use continuous glucose meters all the time or at all. They help to understand how your body works.

 People ask me all the time what books I would recommend. Jessie’s books are easy to read, accessible to implement and make a difference for people. Check out her books and podcasts!!

Preparing for the Holidays and Addressing Loneliness

In December of past years, I usually write about how to prepare for the holidays. I share strategies for managing the holiday season so that you enter January feeling prepared for the new year rather than exhausted from too much food and alcohol, and too little sleep. This year, I am going to refer you to past blogs, and the Holiday Anxiety eBook Natasha and I wrote a few years ago.

This holiday season I want to focus on creating a plan to address our loneliness or help people who are lonely.

Mostly, I write about protecting our power supply through what we eat, how we move our bodies, and getting enough sleep. I leave the “relationship” part of the diamond to the therapists, mentors and coaches. Not that I think that relationships are unimportant – in fact they are essential. I just focus on taking care of the body, brain and mind because they’re under represented.

But I also think that loneliness – especially around the holidays – is a relationship concept also under-discussed, or we think of it as part of depression. Dr. Vivek Murthy, who served as the 19th Surgeon General of the United States from December 15, 2014 to April 21, 2017, has been on a mission to bring this topic out into the open. Below are links to an article and podcast that I think are worth reviewing. Dr, Murthy is very articulate on how the increase in loneliness in recent years is predictive of poor physical and mental health and contributes to the breakdown of communities.

What I appreciate about Dr. Murthy’s discussion are his suggestions on how to address it. Primarily: find connection, protect family or personal time, and be curious about the wholeness of other people.

I have gone through periods of my life where I was desperately lonely, and other periods where I was alone but not lonely. Some of my loneliest times were when I had connections to lots of people, but no meaningful connections. One of those lonely times was when I was in medical school. Part of why I could not feel the connection that were available is because I was physically exhausted; I was disconnected from family and friends, and all curiosity was consumed by taking in information. However, I did try to address my loneliness before it spiraled into some other problems.

Now, as an naturopathic doctor, if you are experiencing loneliness I would ask you to look at and clarify the causes, and encourage you to address them.

• In my office one of the most common causes is fatigue. People are just too exhausted to tolerate deeper connections (relationships) due to physical health problems. One way to honor this truth, and still look for connections, might be find “lighter” connections by being in a community without expectations of the types of interactions that wear you out. Ideas for this include going to a coffee shop, sitting in the back of a church to listen to the music, going to an Al-Anon group, a Meetup group, or sitting in a library. What I have found is in the long term, time with screens fills time but doesn’t fill the heart or the need for in-person connection.

• Many people also find ways to connect in the form of service. When we help others, we often help ourselves. Volunteering at a food bank in your community, at your library, helping kids with homework, or at a retirement center talking with the elderly, are some ideas.

• Another approach is to create an event for connection. At one of my loneliest times, I said after an Aikido class “Hey, I am going to the Thai restaurant for dinner, anyone want to come?” The first night 5 people joined me and over time, Thai food became a Thursday ritual. During those shared meals, I met people who became lifelong friends.

• Be curious about people. It’s easy to think that other people have perfect lives and somehow aren’t as lonely as we are – but they too might appreciate connecting. This must be true of all the people who talk through an entire plane flight. I was a student at a school in the south for dyslexic medical students; it was a relief to share my dyslexic story with others. One of my fellow students was African American and I asked her “Is it different being in the south as an African American?” She answered, “Yes, it is.” From that simple question, we became walking buddies. I think she got some relief from her loneliness of being the only person of color in school, and for me – our conversations allowed me to explore what it meant to not meet the hyper-feminine expectations of the south.

• My last suggestion comes from Brene Brown’s Braving the Wilderness. Dr. Brown says that for us to have connection, we have to show people who we truly are. When we are accepted for who we are, for the similarities as well as the differences, then we can be our authentic selves and relax into that connection.

In summary, Dr. Murthy is right in his assertion that loneliness is detrimental to our health and the importance of addressing it. So: make a plan. Dare to be uncomfortable. Be willing to protect what is important to you. Start by finding the smallest of connections. Use the internet for find resources and education, such as listening to Dr. Murthy and reading Dr. Brown’s books.

I hope you have a good holidays,

Kristen

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• The Ezra Klein Show with Dr. Vivek Murthy “The Loneliness Epidemic”

• Forbes by Dan Schawbe “How to Solve the Work Loneliness Epidemic”

• Ted Talk by Guy Winch “Emotional First Aid for Loneliness”

Juice for Anxiety?

A participant in a recent training sent me a follow up email with a question about the Lizard Brain Treat. She gave me permission to share it here.

Hey Kristen, 

 Hope you had a safe travel home.

Thanks again for a great conference!  I have been getting more protein into myself this weekend and am feeling less irritable with my 4 yo daughter, so already showing benefits for the every 3 hour protein plan!  I also walked the half mile to work today vs driving! You have inspired me so much!

I was sharing some the info with my Mental Health colleagues today and they said “juice”? That has way too much sugar, what about fruit and nuts?  I said “Hmmmm, I’m not sure”, and had to look it up. I saw that you recommended just a ¼ cup juice, not a whole bottle…for lizard brain symptoms.  I also have a colleague who has diabetes, and he said, “I can’t have juice, no diabetic should have any juice.”  What words of wisdom do you have for that question?

Sincerely, Molly

Molly -

Thanks for doing the experiments. 

If people object to juice, they don’t have to use juice. I just find it effective in shifting a person’s mood immediately when they have lizard brain symptoms, such as anxiety, irritation, agitation, or early morning waking for 2 hours.

A ¼ cup of juice is not a lot of sugar. Remember, it is not just juice. We are also adding nuts or a protein source, since the juice will be burned quickly. 

I did a quick search:

·      Apple juice has 28 total carbohydrates in one cup, so ¼ cup has 7 grams of total carbohydrates

·      Granulated white sugar for 1 teaspoon is 4.2 grams of total carbohydrates. 

·      Dried cranberries have 26 grams of total carbohydrates in 1/3 cup. 

Note that dried fruit takes longer for the glucose to get to the brain since the sugar has to be released from the fiber.

Some people don’t have the control to drink only a ¼ cup of juice and will drink a full cup or more. This can be a problem. Additionally, sometimes when people are watching their carbohydrates, as with diabetes, it’s easier to eliminate this food category altogether.

I tell people who are opposed to juice and are anxious/irritable/early morning waking to try the juice to see if it works. If it works and helps them regain emotional balance or go back to sleep, then we work to find a food that will have an equivalent response. It is different for each person. Here are some of the solutions that have worked: dried cranberries, carrots, honey sticks, 1-2 large smarties.

The Smarties candy is an interesting one. It’s made of dextrose which converts quickly into glucose. The large ones are about the size of a penny.

My goal for the juice is to quickly get some glucose to the brain to turn off the adrenalin that is firing up the lizard brain. Here are some common scenarios where I find ¼ cup of juice (or equivalent) effective.

• Slowing down anxiety and panic attacks

• Irritable teenager who is frustrated

• Waking in the early morning with thoughts racing

• Not hungry in the morning at waking

• Really groggy in the morning at waking

Hopefully that is helpful. Kristen

Tenets for Practice that Put the Client at the Center

I just finished a two-day training in Minnesota. Participants kept coming up to me and saying how much they appreciated my approach. What is that approach? How might it be different than other methods? What does it mean to be client-centered? What is the humanistic approach? Would mindfulness practitioners call this approach mindfulness? I tried to get clearer on what people are experiencing because all I experience is me.

I do have some tenets that I hold on to:

• Don’t try to be smarter than God or Evolution. I embrace the fact that I understand very little of what’s happening for individual. However, I can set up experiments to test for what might be true.

• Trust people to tell you close enough to the truth. Again, I don’t have to know everything. I just have to know what they are willing to try and what they won’t.

• Encourage being inconsistently consistent. Perfection is always a prison. How I have seen people change is to try, stop, make new intension, try again, don’t make it, succeed for a little while, stop, try again, miss, change it up, learn, try, fail, pout, feel anxious, try again, and so it continues. What I have learned most from martial arts is to get up after every fall.

• Willpower resides in our responsive brain. If we are not fed, we are reactive and can’t be responsive. Our anxiety, irritation, and agitation will escalate until we fuel our bodies.

• Human physiology is common to all humans. The details of our choices arise from our past experiences, our current circumstances, and what our holds us back. But the physiology happens for everybody’s body.

• Be curious about how the underlying physiology drives behavior. If someone is living in the complex world of homelessness, they might need to drink soda all day long to feed their pre-frontal cortex so that they can be responsive instead of reactive. Change comes from being responsive to one’s situation. Drinking soda all day is not a sustainable long-term behavior, but it may be what’s needed to get a toe hold on a new path.

• Most of us cannot DO a food program. We make moment to moment decisions about how and what to feed ourselves based on what’s available. Having have some basic knowledge about what will be useful in-the-moment can be empowering and help us gain some understanding of what our possibilities are.

• My job is to witness and to constructively add to people’s lives. Telling people to stop a behavior or to change is akin to suggesting a massive mountain climb. Teaching the skills needed for change and doing experiments along the way so people can begin to feel better in a single moment provides a more sustainable pathway for change.

Most of these tenants are not unique to learning and healing. I think the connection to how physiology impacts and drives our behavior is important and sometimes lost to the drama of life.

The workbook that Natasha and I are writing describes how the physiology of glucose control can impact how we experience all forms of anxiety. I have witnessed that attending to the physiology helps not only anxiety, but other conditions as well: PTDS, OCD, night terrors, 3 am waking, fatigue, depression, ADHD, and others. It also supports effective decision making, creativity, and sustaining energy levels throughout each day.

If you have been using food to help yourself or the people you connect to feel better, we would love to hear how addressing glucose control has positively impacted different behavioral symptoms. How has understanding the ways in which protein and carbohydrates influence behaviors been helpful? Please take this 1-minute survey.

Preventing CEO Burnout

John, the CEO of a mid-size family company, has been putting in 90-hour workweeks for 11 months.  Between the tight economy, an aggressive new competitor, and several family dramas, his taking a vacation now has been out of the question.  It is hard for John to get to sleep; it is even harder for him to stay asleep, and his brain turns off only after several cocktails before going to bed.  John knows that he can’t continue this pattern, but he doesn’t know how to stop, or frankly, what else to do.

One night recently, he woke up gasping for air.  John and his wife thought that he might be having a heart attack and frantically called 911.  As they waited for the ambulance’s arrival, several heavy thoughts registered in a back corner of John’s mind.  He was simultaneously afraid and relieved:  Afraid . . . This is it!  I’m going to die.  And yes, relieved:  Why, if I were to survive the heart attack, I might actually get a break!

At the ER, the medical team conducted blood tests and monitored his heart.  After several hours, the team informed John that he had experienced a panic attack.  He was given two prescriptions and encouraged to check in with his primary care physician as soon as possible. The first prescription was for four days worth of Clonazepam, a benzodiazepine that immediately quiets the brain, but is very addictive.  Also, the ER doctor prescribed Celexa, an antidepressant that aids in reducing anxiety.

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The experience stunned John.  “I’m not the sort of guy who has panic attacks!”  Then, dozens of other questions came:  What does this mean? . . .  Am I not cut out for this level of leadership? . . .  Am I failing and don’t know it? . . . How can I take care of the company and my family, if I am not a strong leader? . . .

After taking a couple of days off, “due to a family emergency,” John returned to work and to the stress that comes with being a man who has many people depending on him and great responsibilities.  Soon, getting access to another Clonazepam tablet became a daily matter for him - a disturbing and frightening concern because he has seen other family members struggle with addictions to prescription drugs.  He called his family physician whose only suggestion was to take time off.

On Tuesday, May 7, 2013. The Wall Street Journal published Leslie Kwoh’s article “When the CEO Burns Out.” She listed fatigue, resentment, and loneliness as causes for burnout.  She gave examples of well-known companies that have lost valuable leadership, when men and women took vacations and/or left to recover physically and mentally.   As remedies. she suggests time off and medications, as needed.

Wait a minute.  We can do better than that!  CEO and C-suite executives do not burn out.  Their brains and bodies do! These same brains and bodies begin to break down when they are exposed to chronic stress.  A common symptom of CEO breakdown caused by chronic stress is loss of a person’s ability to focus. 

In prudent organizations today, leaders understand that executive brains and their physical well-being are the most important assets of any venture.  Therefore, owners and boards of directors anticipate their organization’s needs; after all, they are used to essential scheduled maintenance on machines.  It’s required for all human assets too!

The idea is a sound one.  Therefore, it doesn’t take long for someone to ask: What should be included in an organization’s prevention plan for executive burnout?  At a minimum plans should include:

 1.    Instilling in your corporate culture the behaviors that increase the body’s ability to cope with stress.  These tenants are eight hours of sleep, 30 minutes of exercise daily, and at least three meals with protein and vegetables per day. 

 2.   Insisting on time away:  Our brains function better when we take time away from complexity and sameness.  Rest, relaxation, and discontinuous time and activities produce fresh perspectives - essential in thinking strategically.

 3.  Scheduling annual physical examinations with primary care physicians for C-suite executives.  Metrics of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and weight gain are symptoms of a body not handling stress well.

Rather than being surprised and in crisis when an executive must step out or step down, which is extremely costly, why not create a preventive maintenance plan for key executives in your organization?