Episode 94: Fear Response & Nervous System Down-regulation
Tune in to hear why your digestive issues might be kicking up right now, pain flares & fear, how to groom your relaxation response (and why you must), practices for downregulating the nervous system during high stress times, and why extra nervous system support can help.
In this episode:
Why your digestive issues might be kicking up right now
Pain flares & fear
How to groom your relaxation response (and why you must)
Practices for down-regulating the nervous system during high stress times
Why extra nervous system support can help
Resources mentioned:
1:1 Funk’tional Nutrition Membership
Eat to Achieve (Available for free within the Funk’tional Nutrition Collective)
Robert VDH Breath work: @askrobertvdh on Instagram
Erin Telford 7 minute Breathwork
Learn More About Gut Health & Mindset
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Erin Holt [00:00:05]:
Welcome to The Funk'tional Nutrition Podcast. I'm your host, Erin Holt, and I'm a board certified integrative and functional nutritionist. I live on the seacoast of New Hampshire and work with clients in my virtual practice all over the world through private consultations and online nutrition and functional medicine programs. Functional medicine nutrition is all about diving deep with people to get to the root cause of their health issues and that's exactly what I tackle in this podcast. All things health, food and nutrition, unpacking current research, and almost a decade of clinical experience. I love to bring experts and thought leaders to the table so we can all learn together. Please keep in mind this podcast is created for educational purposes only and should never be used as a replacement for medical diagnosis or treatment. Thanks for joining me.
Erin Holt [00:00:57]:
Now let's dive in. Hey guys, back with another show. This one's probably going to be on the shorter side. I polled Instagram. You guys are like my trusted colleagues. I swear. Whenever I'm like, hmm, I have a business question that I need to work out. I know, let me poll Instagram.
Erin Holt [00:01:15]:
And you guys always come through. Right now I feel like there's so much information flying at our brains that I'm so inundated with stuff that my attention span isn't what it normally is. Mine's pretty great and right now it is not. And I'm like, if I'm feeling this way, chances are lots of other folks are feeling this way. So I asked, what would you prefer? Would you continue to prefer long form content or more shorter, more frequent chunks of information? And it was pretty clear what the answer was. So here we are. We're going to do some mini episodes. My mic is about to fall down.
Erin Holt [00:01:57]:
We're going to do some shorter mini episodes. I do want to continue to talk about current events simply because that's what's the forefront of people's minds right now. But we will eventually get back to podcasting as usual, intermittent fasting, food sensitivities, food sensitivity testing that is all locked and loaded and will be coming your way in the not so distant future. Today what we're going to do is talk about the fear response and nervous system down regulation. I think this is the most important thing to address right now. And I was watching a video last night and heard somebody say, how are you responding to this crisis? And I thought that was such an interesting question and it really made me think because if you look around, you'll notice that people are responding in different ways. There are people that go right into action. And I consider myself that when I feel out of control, I need to have some semblance of control and the way that I do that is to go into action.
Erin Holt [00:02:56]:
What can I do? And then there are some people that totally freeze. We hear a lot about the fight or flight response in our bodies or stress response, but we don't hear as much about freeze. But that is another stress response and so I would just have you pay attention to how are you responding right now? Are you shutting down? Are you just kind of like closing off from everything or are you going into overproduction mode and just pay attention to that? When I was talking to my hormone group about this, one of the suggestions I made is if you are in that freeze response, what can be really helpful is moving through some safety mantras I am safe, I am safe. Anything you can do to enhance the safety signaling in your brain will be really helpful. You can do that meditation that I recorded for you guys last week. Super helpful. If you're more of the leadership take charge, take action. Notice yourself there. You're kind of like grinding on the adrenals a little bit.
Erin Holt [00:04:03]:
We'll talk about that in today's show. But also you might be carrying around a lot of people's energy. During times of crisis, people tend to cord their energy in to the leaders, to the take charge people and just pay attention to that because you might need to be doing extra grounding practices, extra energy clearing practices, some of which we'll talk about today. So just pay attention. How are you responding to this crisis? One way that I'm responding is asking myself how can I be of service? Again. I feel totally out of control with what's happening around me. So what can I do to be of help? And if you look around, there's a big rise in that which is so overwhelmingly beautiful. I think of people just showing up and saying how can I help? How can I serve the greater good? And I just love that how that relates to me specifically in this business. I am doing something that is surprising me, to be honest with you.
Erin Holt [00:05:10]:
But I am reopening my private practice for folks who have been waiting to work with me. What I'm not doing is a waitlist. It is first come, first serve. I will include all the requisite links that you guys need for how to work with me in the show notes. There are options. So what I'm doing in my practice right now is totally gut stuff. So if you have been waiting for the gut program, it's going to be a while. I just have to be really honest with myself and you guys.
Erin Holt [00:05:48]:
I just don't have the time. I am used to having five 8 hour work days and now I have 3 hours a day. And so the workhorse energy that it was going to take to produce that content, it's just not there. I don't have the man hours so I don't want to leave everybody hanging. So I do want to offer the functional gut lab testing and analyzation still. It's all available on my website. If you go to erinholthealth.com/testsandconsults that breaks it down into individual things. What I also did was put my initial intake appointment on sale.
Erin Holt [00:06:32]:
So it is the most cost effective way to work with me right now. So that is something that I am offering. I'm going to delay Carb Compatibility Project that was supposed to kick off in April. I just feel like people can't wrap their heads around that right now. So we're going to push that off. Stay tuned. Probably sometime in May if you were planning on doing that and you're like, well, I want something, my Eat to Achieve program is ready to go. You can purchase that anytime.
Erin Holt [00:07:05]:
Some people just can't have the information in their brain right now. They just can't process anything outside of, like, crisis mode right now. Today's show is hopefully going to talk you away from that. But some people are like, I'm bored and I'm looking for something to do and I really want to learn how to support myself. And it's like, now or never. Like, let's do this. Eat to Achieve is awesome. It's $99.
Erin Holt [00:07:27]:
It's a 21 day program, but you can pick through it at your own pace. That is something if you're looking for something to anchor into that's for you. Okay, so those are the big things that I wanted to share with you. Let's talk about what might be going on. A lot of former clients listen to this podcast, and a lot of people with chronic stuff listen to this podcast. So I want to call out to anybody who might be in a flare right now if their digestive issues are flaring, let's say what tends to happen if you have chronic stuff, things that have just been going on for a while, whether it's autoimmunity or digestive stuff or chronic pain, during times of stress, they can kick up. And what happens is that it can send us into a mental tailspin, a mental spiral.
Erin Holt [00:08:21]:
People freak out because they think they're going all the way back to the beginning, and that is simply not true. Whatever tools you've used in the past that worked, now's the time to bring them back out. If you're feeling stress, throw down extra support. Listen, I am currently retreating myself for SIBO right now because I started to have a lot of SIBO symptoms flare up. It's something that I deal with for years. On again, off again. I haven't suffered from SIBO probably like two years and I noticed a flare up a few weeks ago. So I'm on a treatment protocol and I'm feeling amazing.
Erin Holt [00:09:03]:
But now is the time to do what's worked for you in the past. Throw down some extra digestive support. If you know that you have GI issues during stress. Our hydrochloric acid can get a little wonky and we're not producing enough, so we're not breaking down our foods appropriately, which means that we can be more sensitive to foods. I would highly recommend doing some digestive enzymes. Houston enzymes are my enzyme of choice. The TriEnza is the most comprehensive product, so it's going to break down all the foods. You do get a 20% discount when you use the coupon code houston20.
Erin Holt [00:09:44]:
So you can apply that at their website, houstonenzymes.com. So things like that are going to be extra helpful if you have chronic GI issues. This isn't for everybody. Not everybody has to do this. But if you know it's easy for your apple cart to be upset, then throw down that support. And if you've never addressed your gut issues and you're like, this is really the time that I want to do it, totally reach out to me. We can get the ball rolling, especially if you're in a flare. I want you to start feeling better.
Erin Holt [00:10:26]:
One thing to understand about all of this now we're going to talk about the nervous system, right? I'm talking about our fear response in nervous system kicking up, which is happening for all of us across the board. But we have something called the enteric nervous system, which is basically the nervous system of the gut. They're neurons that innervate the intestines. And this enteric nervous system is often referred to as the second brain. And our autonomic nervous system, the autonomic nervous system is the nervous system that has the sympathetic branch and the parasympathetic branch, right? Your stress response and your relaxation response talked about that a lot on the show. So I'm not going to go into great detail here. But that nervous system modulates the enteric nervous system. If you have chronic stress, chronic nervous system activation, if you're always in that sympathetic activation state, that stress response, you're more apt to have issues with the enteric nervous system.
Erin Holt [00:11:29]:
So you might have constipation bowel issues, rectal spasms, other things that we see with SIBO and IBS, the migrating motor complex is part of the enteric nervous system. Dysfunction of the migrating motor complex can lead to SIBO and IBS. Some people even refer to chronic SIBO as a broken migrating motor complex. So if we have issues with the brain's nervous system, we're going to have issues with the gut's nervous system. Different parts of that are not going to work appropriately, and you're going to feel the effects of that digestively. We know that upwards of 80% of IBS is actually SIBO, and we know that stress impacts IBS in a major way. So if you're experiencing a flare up here, it totally makes sense. So we want to address it from two angles.
Erin Holt [00:12:20]:
We want to address it from the gut, but we really, really want to address it from the brain, from the nervous system. And we're going to talk about ways to do that today. The other thing I also want to mention, if you're experiencing a pain flare, if it's related to autoimmunity, if you're in an autoimmune flare, go listen to episode 62. I give you tips for coping with an autoimmune flare. I wrote it right after I got out of my last autoimmune flare. So it was lots of information there. I'm going to do a mini episode as to how COVID relates to autoimmunity and what you have to pay attention to and all that sorts of stuff like that. But if you're in an autoimmune flare, go to episode 62.
Erin Holt [00:13:04]:
That'll give you some tools. I also have a blog on my website. But if you're flaring specifically with pain, there is a very intimate connection between anxiety, fear, stress, and pain. They can all cluster together. They can be networked together in the brain. The amygdala is our fear center. It's part of our limbic system. It has a lot to do with fear and a learned response to fear.
Erin Holt [00:13:40]:
So, right, if you touch a hot pan and you get burned and you get hurt, it's the amygdala that's going to tell you, don't touch a hot pan again. Right? It processes emotions, especially danger. And any past experience of danger will directly activate the amygdala to respond to fear in danger by initiating an immediate sympathetic response, immediate stress response. It activates the HPA axis. And so when you're under stress, when you're in fear, when that amygdala is being kicked up, you can also experience pain as well. You can experience a pain flare. So is the solution to take pain medications? Maybe for you, but the original thing that we need to address is the nervous system's response. There are certain psychological triggers that strongly activate that HPA access, the Hypothalamus pituitary, adrenal access.
Erin Holt [00:14:43]:
And here's what they are ready for them. Uncertainty, conflict, lack of control, lack of information. It's everything that we're all collectively experiencing right now. If you feel stressed out, there's a reason for it. This is activating this stress response. So what we need to do is figure out ways to lower this stress response, and you're going to feel this strong activation. This is going to be especially true for you if you have a history of chronic stress, if you have a history of trauma as well. I talk about ace studies, adverse childhood experiences.
Erin Holt [00:15:27]:
If you're exposed to acute and chronic stress in childhood, your ability to engage in your HPA access is impaired. It's kind of like you have a broken system. So if this has been your long standing story, then in times of crisis, you're going to slip into that fight or flight response way easier. Way easier. You have a lower threshold of perceived danger. This is really true for me. I tend to get really fearful of things. My husband and I can be in the exact same situation.
Erin Holt [00:16:01]:
I will find things in my environment that register as fear and danger, and he will not. Same environment, same situation. He'll be fine. I will be freaking out. We were just in the woods the other day, and our dog runs off all the time, and then I heard a dog bark in the woods and I hear that and I'm like, oh my god, Murray's in trouble. Murray's in danger. And he's like, no, he just like whistles and Murray comes know it's a very noticeable response, but what happens is that your nervous system essentially stays switched on in the fight or flight mode. This wears down the adrenals.
Erin Holt [00:16:38]:
It also increases the fear center in your brain. You could literally get amygdala hypertrophy and then it perpetuates the problem. So you sense more fear and it activates the HPA axis more strongly and your adrenals get more burnt out. And so it becomes this system that's really hard to get out of. So it's important for you to kind of assess. We can really only choose one at a time. We're either choosing a stress response or we're choosing a relaxation response. So which one does your body go to more easily? Is your fight or flight response like this overactive highway in your rest and digest your relaxation, your parasympathetic response more like an overgrown path that doesn't really get more foot traffic, right? We have to pave that path.
Erin Holt [00:17:32]:
If you are easily stressed and overwhelmed I'm not just talking about right now in an acute period of stress, just like all the time. If you're easily stressed, easily overwhelmed, and really feeling the effects of it right now, you've probably favored your fight or flight response as your preferred pathway. And so complete relaxation may be difficult for you. You guys are the type of people, you guys, myself included, where saying, oh, you just have to relax or just try meditation or just do some deep breathing. It's not as simple as that, right? You have to practice this. You have to hone and groom your relaxation response so it becomes easier to maintain. This is an ongoing practice. These are the things that we have to practice day in and day out.
Erin Holt [00:18:23]:
So when we are faced with a crisis, we can slip into those places more easily and we don't go into complete and utter overdrive. Now I'm going to list out some basic ways to down regulate the nervous system. But if you're locked into that response, if this is a chronic thing, this is an ongoing pattern for you, it might require more targeted therapies. So some specific ones, I'll just briefly touch upon them right now. Somatic experiencing can be very, very helpful. Traumahealing.org is a website you can visit. I've talked about neurofeedback on the show before. Mcguardian Associates in Dover, New Hampshire can be really great to literally go into your brain and change it.
Erin Holt [00:19:08]:
EFT emotional freedom technique can be wonderful. There are YouTube videos you can follow along with or you can reach out to a practitioner. My mother, Cheri Keirstead does this and she does it all virtually. I will link up her information in the show notes. There's something called DNRS dynamic neural retraining which aims to heal Olympic system injury, essentially. There's a book called Wired for Healing by Annie Hopper, and the website is retrainingthebrain.com. It is super effective. It requires a lot of patient commitment.
Erin Holt [00:19:47]:
This DNRS, it's about 2 hours a day. So those are all things that you can start to think about as ways this stuff does not happen overnight. If this is true for you, if you've experienced this for a long time and it manifests as ongoing issues, whether that's mental health issues, physical health issues, or both, this is something to really dive into. Now, if we're just looking like, how do we deal with our stress right now in this moment? How do we downregulate the nervous system? Breath work can be super potent and powerful. There's so many different types of ways to breathe. They're all good. Okay? They're all good. We have yoga breathing pranayama.
Erin Holt [00:20:39]:
You could easily find free YouTube videos to just learn how to appropriately breathe. I recently discovered, my friend Kaylee McDevitt.
Erin Holt [00:20:50]:
She introduced me to Robert VDH on Instagram. He's a resilience coach. He does Wim Hof, and, like, a lot of oxygen breath. I actually just got off a Zoom with him, so he's been doing free Zoom breath work sessions Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. I'm going to ask him if I can give you guys the Zoom link. If he says yes, I will post it in the show notes. But that is really cool because it kind of elicits your stress response. You hold your breath during certain portions of the breathing, and he guides you through.
Erin Holt [00:21:26]:
You're safe. You're safe. You have enough oxygen in your body and so you get that active stress response, and then you kind of have to coax yourself down from it, so it really increases your stress resiliency, which is such a big, like listen, you guys, we're human beings and we're always going to come in contact with stress all the time. Always. Just by nature of being a human being.
Erin Holt [00:21:50]:
What we have to realize is that.
Erin Holt [00:21:52]:
We're resilient beings as well, and we have to take care of ourselves in order to maintain that resiliency. The more we push ourselves and beat up on ourselves, the less resilient we become, the less bounce back we have. And so any practices like this that kind of steep you in your stress response but in a very safe environment, and then you retrain your brain to understand, oh, wait, I'm actually safe. That can be wildly helpful right now. So I do recommend you, at the very least, check him out on Instagram and maybe experiment with this type of breath work.
Erin Holt [00:22:31]:
I also have had Erin Telford on the show before. She does a very specific type of breath work that I love. It's not something that I do every day because it requires some time, like, usually about an hour. But she does have a free seven minute mini breath work practice on her website that I would highly recommend. Of course I will link to that in the show notes. I've talked a lot about ways to support the immune system and herbs and supplements and all that kind of stuff. And I'll talk more specifically about herbs for the nervous system. But you got to do some of the lifestyle things.
Erin Holt [00:23:07]:
You got to do it. You can't out supplement a wildly stressful mindset. There are pharmaceutical companies that are doing clinical trials right now of medications that dampen the interleukin 6 response. It's an inflammatory cytokine. And so they're trying to assess whether modifying this inflammatory response provides benefits for COVID-19 patients, which is interesting. And this is a hat tip to my mentor, colleague, and friend Jessica Flanagan, who turned me on to this. But what if we started to explore ways to decrease the interleukin 6 response? Like right now, in real time ways that we can do this. Self compassion.
Erin Holt [00:23:56]:
Being easy and gentle on yourself right now. There's a PubMed article that shows that self compassion lowers interleukin six. I mean, this isn't just like woo woo in witchcraft. This is like the real deal, man. Be kind to yourself. Other positive emotions so awe, wonder, amazement, gratitude, appreciation, all of these can dampen the inflammatory response in your body. They can also increase secretory IGA and treg cells. This is your immune system we're talking about here.
Erin Holt [00:24:35]:
Simply sitting back and feeling appreciation, looking out the window and saying, hey, there's a cardinal there. How special is that feeling? That holding that feeling in your body. That's going to have very positive effects on inflammation and your immune system. And it's also going to down regulate your nervous system. That meditation I recorded you. I worked in a lot of specific practices to that which lowers inflammation and supports the immune system. I did that on purpose so that's a tool utilize the tools.
Erin Holt [00:25:11]:
Different types of breath work can do this as well. And getting adequate sleep. And if you're not sleeping well at night, taking naps throughout the day can help with that. So those are all ways that we can just support ourselves, throw down extra support. Other things I want to talk about Epsom salt baths. So I have this little thing going over on Instagram right now. They're like food as medicine. Easy to find, inexpensive grocery store hacks.
Erin Holt [00:25:45]:
Basically to calm yourself down. Different herbs you can get through teas, like Chinese skull cap, holy basil, chamomile, green tea, all of these really calming herbs. You don't ned to order up a bunch of supplements. We're utilizing foods as medicine right now, right? So you don't have to get overwhelmed with like, what should I do? You can just work these things into rotation. But Epsom salt baths is another easy grocery store find, inexpensive and Epsom salt really calms down the central nervous system. It can get you into a parasympathetic state taking a bath. I throw a lot of Epsom salt baths or a lot of Epsom salts into my baths.
Erin Holt [00:26:33]:
I'll throw some lavender in, which also calms down the nervous system. And there is evidence that you can absorb the magnesium through your skin. Magnesium is wonderful because we burn through it during stress. So we're all stressed out right now. So we're using up all of our magnesium. So it's another way we want to eat magnesium rich foods like cacao, leafy greens, avocados, almonds, cashews, black beans, legumes. We also want to supplement with magnesium right now, probably. And then get yourself into an epsom salt bath if you're like me, if you're an empath, meaning you basically absorb other people's energy.
Erin Holt [00:27:15]:
If you feel the collective anxiety, if you're feeling the collective fear, if you're feeling the collective grief, if you're feeling really big stuff that you're like, this is bigger than what I'm feeling right now. Like, right now, I know I can tell you I'm safe. I feel good, but I'm feeling bigger emotions. Epsom salt baths can be really helpful to kind of, like, regroup. Reground, take care of yourself. They're lovely to do before bed. Okay. Other things that you can do.
Erin Holt [00:27:52]:
And honestly, I'm a high stress person. I am that clogged up highway. That's my stress response. That's the one I've been pushing down most of my life. So I have to do a lot of practice and a lot of training with all of these lifestyle practices: yoga, meditation, all sorts of breath work, reiki, energy healing, massage, body work, like, all of it. I have to throw the book at my body because that's what it takes know? Continue to practice that. So I also do quite a bit of herbal support. There's one thing I've probably said this on the show before, but Amy McKelvey, who is the CEO of Her Vital Way, she's a dear friend herbalist.
Erin Holt [00:28:33]:
She's been on the show a bunch of times. The one thing she said to me is that you might always need nervine support, and that's totally fine. And it was like, I just needed to hear that. I needed that permission. I needed somebody to say that to me, to be like, oh, okay, so healing my stress response isn't just like, a set it and forget it. My nervous system probably always needs some downregulation help. And so when I'm in periods of really acute stress and those emotional HPA triggers, right, lack of certainty, the unknown, not knowing what to expect, all of that, I do extra support myself. So one thing that I use and love is CBD full spectrum hemp oil.
Erin Holt [00:29:22]:
And I always use Coyote River Hemp Company, they're a friend and a podcast sponsor. They're doing something really cool, so I have to shout them out ands let you guys know. All of their products are available through goodandcompany.co, and I'll link to that in the show notes. What they're doing now is providing free shipping on all orders. You don't have to hit a minimum. There's no code necessary. You just automatically get free shipping. There's an option for free local delivery.
Erin Holt [00:29:56]:
I know I have a lot of local listeners, so if you're in a 20 miles radius of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, you can get your products delivered to your door contactless. So they're really working the whole social distancing thing. So you can get CBD, the Coyote River CBD product, the actual hemp oil, which is really powerful, but you could also take a food as medicine approach and order up some of their beverages so they have nitro cold brew, which is really good. So if you love your coffee and you can't give it up right now, you at least get it with some CBD so it can calm you down. Vibes. DRAM apothecary adaptogenic seltzers - those are awesome.
Erin Holt [00:30:45]:
And you can shop their online store, select local delivery at checkout, and then just go over to their website, goodandcompany.co for more information. You can use the code FUNK10 for 10% off of your order anytime. So you get a little discount there through the show, and I just can't recommend it enough. It's really helping me, and I know it's helping a lot of other people. So check out them, that's one option. And then do a lot of adrenal support for yourself. Adaptogens are great right now.
Erin Holt [00:31:24]:
B complex is really helpful. GABA, L-theanine, phosphatidylserine. All of these things help with nervous system response and then any type of nervines magnolia, passion flour, zysphus, kava, any of those teas that I talked about earlier. All of these things are going to help you, and it's not something that you just have to like. You can work these into your daily rotation. I think it's just all super duper important right now. So the more we can support our nervous system during these uncertain times, the better off we're going to feel just on an emotional level. But it's also going to have this ripple down effect to our immune system as well.
Erin Holt [00:32:14]:
So hopefully this show provided you with some resources. We want to tame that fear response. We want to work in some practices. We want to throw down some extra support with CBD, with some hemp, with some nervines, with some herbs, and we will hopefully come out of all of this on the other side. All right, so continue to take care of you. You can look for a couple of mini episodes coming up later on this week. Thanks for joining us for this episode of the Funk'tional Nutrition podcast. If you'd like to submit a question to the show, fill out the contact form at Erin Holt Health.
Erin Holt [00:32:56]:
If you like what you hear, don't forget to subscribe and leave a review in iTunes. Take care of you.
