THE JOY, AND ANXIETY, OF PREGNANCY

One of my greatest lessons in life is that, like Whitman said, we contain multitudes. At no time in my life has this ever been more apparent and, at the same time, more difficult to accept than while pregnant.

Pregnancy is supposed to be a time of great joy — and it is, sometimes. But it can also be a time of great, unprecedented anxiety.

And because there can feel like a lot of pressure as a pregnant person to emphasize joy as the predominant emotion put forward to the outside world, the real, more nuanced truth can often go hidden behind doors deliberately kept closed to visitors, behind which are kept anxieties, fears, and doubts we may be ashamed of revealing, except maybe to a few close confidants. It’s not to say that people don’t ask how you’re feeling — they often do — but the easier, more expected, and palatable answer usually has to do with something like heartburn, and not the overwhelm that may actually be burning you up on a deeper level. For fear of seeming hairbrained or god forbid, unprepared, the easiest answer is to say “heartburn! ACK!” and move on.

I am speaking from my own experience and those confidants who have confided in me, not in an effort to pretend I could ever speak to the uniquely nuanced journey of all pregnant people, but to give voice and visibility to what lurks on the other side of the door, beyond the room of fresh flowers and bassinets that play bird sounds, and hopefully give it a little more space and permission to exist.

Physical discomfort aside for the moment, the mental gymnastics of being both a pregnant person and a preparing parent can be, in short, immense.

Here are just some examples of what a pregnant person may be thinking about at any given moment:

Ensuring you are eating and keeping your kitchen stocked with the right foods, taking the right supplements, avoiding the wrong substances, constantly researching the safety and risks of everything from soft cheese to hand sanitizer to holy basil, reading the stack of pregnancy and parenting books, doing the prenatal classes, ordering all of the things you and the baby will need, researching for hours to find the best versions of those things, budgeting for the things, building the things, making the registry, navigating the shame of sharing the registry, finding the providers, going to the many check-up visits and ultrasounds, learning about strange and sometimes disturbing new concepts like mucus plugs and the sickening parmesan scent of dried breast milk, taking care not to lay too much on your back, taking the temperature of your bath water, waking up in the middle of the night in a sudden panic about cell phone radiation, visiting and revisiting the ever evolving list of questions and to dos on your Notes app, going through the ridiculous feeling process of getting on nursery school or daycare waitlists when your child is barely beyond zygote form, finding a doula if you want one, making and revising the birth plan, packing the go bags for labor (a whole thing), having the mini and major meltdowns, texting your parent friends with questions like “did you take an infant CPR class?” and “do I need special tiny nail cutters?“

— not to mention making sure you’re taking best advantage of the time before the baby to experience freedom and quality time with your parenting partner, friends, and family and if you’re lucky do luxurious things like meditate, take day trips, and spend quiet time connecting with your baby and appreciating the immense beauty of the experience while it’s happening, or even just time to stand in a closet and cry over a pair of tiny adorable socks.

Then comes the physical side of it, and the research, trial, and error that goes into battling things like insomnia, heartburn, and hyperextended ligaments.

Also, the baby algorithms. The instant the social meeds gets even a whiff of that amniotic fluid (sorry, but, it’s real!) between every third friend’s story is now a promotion for an infant probiotic, swaddle, or ankle monitor that your baby absolutely needs to stay safe / healthy / looking fresh.

And yeah, you (or I) click on some of them, because you’re training for a new job and in my case even your midwife does not have a definitive list of things you will need for it — in fact, mine didn’t even have a single book to recommend — so you are left to your own devices to figure out what is necessary. Underlying and motivating this is a new, primal instinct that seems to have developed sometimes within moments of the second pink line on the pregnancy test emerging to give the absolute best to this little being, even if it’s then just a sesame seed, and above all else keep it safe from harm. Yes, I got the ankle monitor that connects to an app to alert you if the baby stops breathing in the crib, but found it used from a nice dad in Rhode Island because that s**t is expensive.

It wasn’t until I was today years old, 6 weeks from my due date, that I acknowledged that pregnancy and preparation for parenthood is actually a part-time job. That when you add up all of the above, it amounts to hours and hours spent preparing. Because beyond simply gathering the sundries of infant life, you are also training for a job you’ve never done, whether that’s raising your first child or figuring out how to parent more than one. It’s like studying for finals that will never really end.

This is to say nothing of being pregnant during a global pandemic. Tack in the overtime spent researching, should or shouldn’t I get the vaccine? Did I harm my baby with the kind of gallon sized hand sanitizer they have at the exit to Lowe’s? Would it be weird if I went down there and checked the ingredients?

Of course, there is also great, almost mystical joy in feeling her in my body, seeing her on the monitor grow from a blueberry to a squash, the shared moments of incredulous WTF wonder whenever we stop and realize what’s happening, the funny little songs we find ourselves singing, and the unbelievable bounty of kindness, generosity, and enthusiasm that has come in the form of childhood neighbors, handknit blankets, family and friends I sometimes feel we have no business deserving.

But it’s no wonder why an immense wave of relief came over me last week, when I finally had the conversations with my clients and the people that I work for — which I’d been putting off for weeks, and only did at the repeated insistence of my love to slow down — about when I’m going to be trying to wrap up work. The weirdest thing — to me, most of all? I cried actual tears thinking about not working. Okay, I’m sure there are some amount of hormones to blame for this, but it was more than that. When I reflected on it, I came to realize to my surprise that I was mourning giving up, even temporarily, this part of my life — a part of my identity and purpose I’ve come to really like. And as I slowly come to grips with that and to the realization that these will be not replaced, but added to, with new identities and purposes — like: mother, milk maker, raspberry kiss giver — I can see that it is only adding to my multitudes. I am about to become more multitudinous. And that, more than anything. is joyous. And also anxiety inducing. And joyous. It’s both. It’s everything. And that’s okay.

HERBS FOR THE HEART

What We Talk About When We Talk About the Heart

The heart is an organ that circulates blood throughout the entire body, transporting essentials of life like oxygen, nutrients, and hormones where they’re needed. Being the precious lifeforce that it is, the heart is also one of the most physically protected organs of your body, held within your ribcage. Energetically, it is also a place we are inclined to protect.

Across many belief systems, the heart is associated with the element of fire. (Think of the word “hearth” — the heart of the house.) Like fire, the heart needs breathing room to really thrive.

Therefore when we talk about healing for the heart, we talk about things that can help us to nurture and protect this precious center while allowing it to breathe. And because this center connects to the rest of the body, to offer these things to the heart is to offer them to all the places it extends to, physically and otherwise.

Cardiotonics

Cardiotonics are botanicals that demonstrate beneficial support for the cardiovascular system of mammals, sometimes referred to as “cardioprotectives.” Marked often by the presence of red berries, haws, and hips, they follow the Doctrine of Signatures, an old concept in folk and herbal medicine where the appearance of a plant (shape, color etc) relates to the part of the body it benefits.

For example, just as the roots of yellow dock and goldenseal share the same hue as the bile they help promote and walnuts resemble brains, many of the cardiotonics we’ll talk about are red, purple, or blue, sharing these hues with the cardiovascular system that they support.

“The soul does not perceive the external or internal physical construction of herbs and roots, but intuitively perceives their powers and virtues, and recognizes at once their signatum…This signatum is often expressed even in the exterior forms of things, and by observing the form we may learn something in regard to their interior qualities, even without using our interior sight.”

- Paracelsus, Swiss physician, alchemist, and astrologer of the German Renaissance — a pioneer in of the medical revolution of the Renaissance, emphasizing the value of observation and received wisdom.

Tannins

The word tannin comes from the Old German word tanna, meaning oak or fir, as in tannenbaum. In nature, tannins are found in the bark, wood, leaves, buds, stems, fruits, seeds, roots, and plant galls of coniferous trees, many flowering plants, and medicinal herbs — like hawthorn, arjuna trees, and motherwort, all categorized as cardioprotective botanicals. Many of these thrive in the colder months of the fall and winter — as if, maybe, they are here for us in our darkest days, glowing bright red through the gloom.

Part of the healing benefit of many cardiotonics can be attributed to the presence of tannins, a special class of cooling, astringent polyphenols. Tannins are abundant in dietary form, found in tea, coffee, cocoa, fruits like pomegranates and persimmons, berries like cranberries, strawberries, and blueberries, spices like cinnamon, vanilla, and cloves, and maybe most recognizably, they are what put the dry in dry red wine and give it its infamous “mouthfeel.” They are also found in abundance in many cardioprotective herbs.

Large molecules, they bind easily, creating substances that are insoluble and resistant to decomposition, and are stored in places like tree bark as well as the dense inner part of a tree trunk known as the heartwood to protect it from infection by bacteria or fungi, in plants buds to protect the inner leaf tissue from being attacked, and in the early leaves of vulnerable germinating seeds.

What’s interesting is that tannic compounds help to protect the “heartwood” of the trees, and when ingested by mammals, serve to protect the heart. When a mammal ingests a tannic plant, tannins take on a protective role by binding with organic compounds in the body that travel through the blood. Tannins also add greatly to the antioxidant activity of a plant, a big part of what helps them play a heart-protective role for the mammals who ingest them.

Hawthorn (Crataegus)

Hawthorn has a long history of use in traditional botanical medicine in many parts of the world for its multiple health effects, but especially in relation to cardioprotection. There are 2,718 species of hawthorn and counting — it self-propogates without fertilization! — all in the rosacea family (along with roses, cherries, blackberries, raspberries, apples, plums, etc) and all of the genus Crataegus meaning “hard wood.” The haw in the name is for the berry-like haws, and the thorn is because of its often very thorny branches — gathering it requires thick gloves and careful moves! In the UK, it often grows in hedges, forming natural boundaries, where the word hawthorn originated as an old English term for hedgethorn.

For these reasons, hawthorn is stabilizing, tough, and great for holding and setting boundaries, supporting us during periods of grief or great transition, and fostering a sense of self-possession.

Hawthorn grows all across the world, known in many cultures to gladden and strengthen the heart. More scientifically, hawthorn is a trophorestorative — an herb that bring balance to a particular body system or organ — its leaves, flowers, and red berries known widely to be trophorestorative for the heart. This includes helping improve the strength of the heartbeat (heart beats stronger, but not faster), dissolve plaques, regulate the heart’s rhythm, and allow blood to move more esily and carry nutrients throughout your whole body, which is why it’s known herbally as a whole-body tonic as well.

Chinese Hawthorn (C. pinnatifida) which also grows in the northwest develops huge, crabapple sized haws and is helpful for weathering changes in the weather and environment. In Mexico, a traditional drink called Ponché is made from Mexican Hawthron (C. Mexicana) and used for mid-winter fiestas around solstice and as a daily tonic, containing other cardioprotectives like cinnamon bark, apples, and plums.

It has no major contraindications except rare cases of hypersenstivity to the Crataegus genus, in pregnancy for its potential uterine stimulation, and with cardioactive digitalis-based medications and beta-blockers, which it may enhance the activity of, but not in a toxic way. At high doses it can cause sedation and low blood pressure.

Roses (Rosa) and Rosehips 🌹

As Sufi poet Rumi wrote: “Rose is sent to earth by the gardeners of paradise for empowering the mind, the eye and the spirit.”

There are many varying traditional uses for the rose. The Damask rose, for instance, is cited as a significant nervine useful for depression and anxiety that may be useful for heartache, and the Chinese have long used rose blooms as an energy stimulant and blood tonic. In one recent Swedish study, rosehips were found to lower blood pressure and cholesterol and decreasing risk of cardiovascular disease, echoing the findings of other similar studies. Not to mention, rose can be a calming, cooling astringent for the skin. As another saying goes, “roses are good for the skin and the soul.”

In early Islamic tradition, the physician Ibn-i Sina in the 11th century emphasized rose’s aromatherapeutic benefits for the heart, brain, and human spirit. Ibn-i Sina wrote: “Because of its exquisite fragrance, the rose addresses the soul. It has a calming effect and is highly beneficial for fainting and for rapid heart beats...It enhances comprehension and strengthens memory.” A later Islamic physician, Ibn-Al-Baitar, praised rose water for strengthening the mind, increasing the life force, and treating anxiety.

Truly, the rose is a magic flower. Noble yet common, fragile yet hearty, sweet yet thorny — the rose’s contradictions give it its delicate strength which is exactly what I feel it imparts energetically to a person and their emotional heart. The rose’s smell alone is an entrancing kind of medicine that to me is more soothing and addictive than almost any other smell. And lately, I’ve noticed that roses are having a kind of heyday — not only is the rose spotting group on Facebook expanding (lol, but also a strong indicator of social patterns) but friends in general are wearing and talking about roses more than ever, rose lattes are on the rise, and people just generally seem to be deriving just a lot of pleasure from these divine plants. And why not? Roses are the best — the Queen of Flowers, as she’s called. Does she deserve all the attention? Yes.

It’s been said that roses were grown in some medieval gardens as much as (or more) for medicinal/nutritional purposes than for beauty. In 1st century Rome, naturalist Pliny the Elder recorded 32 different medicinal uses of the rose. Years later in the 19th century, it was proven that rose petals contain essential oils and the oils began to be distilled and used as aromatherapy, its fragrance used to clear the mind as it has traditionally been used for centuries, now in a more distilled way.

Nutritionally roses and rosehips are especially rich in Vitamin C. In the 1930s, when vitamin C was discovered and American biochemist and peace activist Dr. Linus Pauling claimed it could cure the common cold, and it was also found that roses contained remarkably high amounts of it — three times as much as some citrus fruit — roses began to be used more widely as an immunobooster in fighting common colds and flu.

Among the many other traditional cardiac-related uses of roses and rosehips is their use as an astringent and hemostasic (stopping blood flow), often being used to slow heavy menstruation and other heavy bleeding.

Motherwort (Leonurus cardiaca)

Motherwort is a perennial plant indigenous to central Europe and Scandinavia, but it is also found in the area spanning temperate Russia, Central Asia, and dates back many centuries as a folk medicine. Siberian motherwort appears in the ancient Chinese “Book of Songs” from 1000-500 BCE.

As evidenced by its Latin name (cardiaca) and its nicknames like Lady Lionheart and heartwort, motherwort has long been associated with its affinity for the heart as a remedy for heart conditions, women’s reproductive cycles, and other matters of the heart. Researchers attribute motherwort’s tannins and other phenolic acids for its effectiveness in nervous heart conditions, such as those related to anxiety and trauma, a sedative before surgery, an emmenagogue (stimulating menstrual flow) during the lunar cycle, and a general cardiac tonic for cardiovascular support. My first introduction to motherwort was through an herbalist on Martha’s Vineyard where I was studying — a very strong, powerful women who stood by a motherwort bush and shed a tear when she talked about what motherwort meant to her and how much it had helped her through a difficult menopause and kept her “from throwing socks at her husband.”

In traditional medicine, motherwort extracts have been used for both nervous heart conditions and digestive disorders, having negative chronotropic (slowing heart rate), hypotonic, and sedative effects. It is also believed to have been smoked in some cultures, particularly China and Mexico, for a mild inebriating effect. Motherwort has also been traditionally used a a treatment of climacteric symptoms related to stress brought on by major events.

Hibiscus (Hibiscus rosa-sinensis) 🌺

Hibiscus rosa-sinensis is native several warm temperate, subtropical and tropical regions throughout the world, like China, Hawaii, Florida, the Caribbean, South and Central America, North Africa and Southeast Asia. Like the rose, hibiscus has many varying traditional uses. Across many cultures, it’s prepared as a sour tea, its sourness often softened by honey.

Hibiscus has been used medicinally all across the world, in places including India, Nigeria, Sudan, Japan, Mexico, China, Hawaii, and Thailand. In Egypt, it’s traditionally used as a treatment for cardiac and nerve diseases, in Iran and many other cultures as a traditional hypotensive for hypertension cardiovascular disorders. Research supports this claim, proving hibiscus extract’s relaxing effect on the body, especially the uterus, and its ability to lower blood pressure,  cholesterol, blood sugar, and fevers.

Pomegranate (Punica granatum)

A treasured talisman fruit, the pomegranate is proven in both the realms of magic and science to be cardioprotective, helping not only act as a joy-bringer for the heart and a powerful altar offering for divination, luck, and wealth, but also physically lower blood pressure, reduce plaque and create more suppleness in the arteries, and generally offer broad protection against cardiovascular diseases thanks to its high tannic content.

The pomegranate has also been associated with the fall and winer since ancient Greek times. In the myth, Persephone lives in a world where it’s always summer, until one day she is snatched to the underworld, leaving behind only a pile of flowers. Persephone can’t eat or drink anything in the underworld, or else she’ll be stuck there forever with Hades, who only kidnapped her because he was lonesome. When Persephone’s mother convinces Hades to release her, but not before she he offers her a ripe pomegranate so delicious looking she eats six seeds on her way out the door — which I 100% don’t blame her for — which she is then punished for with 6 months of fall and winter.

Cinnamon (Cinnamomum verum)

And as a last little dash of spice, let’s talk for a minute about the wonders of cinnamon. Also following the Doctrine of Signatures, cinnamon bark resembles the arteries, which it helps support by reducing fats and sugars in the bloodstream, preventing plaque build up in the arteries, and lowering cholesterol, among many other physical benefits. Its magical properties are also many and include igniting passion, energy, clairvoyance, and protection. Cinnamon bark also makes a great altar offering.

May your hearts be nurtured and protected with plenty of breathing room. ('; ♡

ANTIFRAGILE VS. ADAPTOGENIC: PREPARING FOR THE BLACK SWAN

ANTIFRAGILE VS ADAPTOGENIC

Antifragile and adaptogenic are both words becoming popular in the herb world that are often confused with one other and used interchangeably to describe an asset of many of the same botanical medicines. Yet (pushes up nerd glasses) these two terms *actually* diverge in some fascinating ways.

So what’s the difference?

Antifragile is newer to the scene, growing from a concept described in 2012 by stock trader and statistician Nassim Taleb, whose book title helps sum it up: Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder. The main difference between antifragilility and adaptogenic to me lies in Taleb’s words:

“The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.”

Adaptogenic is a much older term coined in 1947 by the Russian pharmacologist N.V. Lazarev “to refer to a substance which was claimed to increase ‘non-specific’ resistance to adverse influences to organism and stress.”

To sum up, adaptogens build resilience; antifragiles go beyond it. Adaptogens withstand, while antifragiles overcome and may in fact use stressors to make the organism at hand better than before. In effect, antifragiles raise the level of resilience.

BLACK SWANS

Taleb had another concept central to his career that he called the black swan, which he used to refer to so-called seemingly improbable events that are in fact predictable by virtue of the fact that unpredictability is predictable, kind of like how deep within the chaos of chaos theory exist patterns, when one looks close enough. Taleb’s black swan concept rides in tandem with his concept of antifragility, if we’re to believe we’re in his universe — all things inevitably crash, at times. The stock market, our bodies, our spirits. The idea is: how soon does it bounce back? Does it become stronger?

The right amount of exercise is a common example of a practice based in antifragility. This relies on the fact that the exercise isn’t done in excess and lead to injury, setting the process backwards rather than forwards. You can apply this same concept to many things, including, say, an immune system strengthened by exposure to germs or a human undergoing any kind of stressor that actually raises their level of resiliency — kind of like “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” but within more reason. Emotional resilience built up by overcoming emotional trauma, for instance — in the best case scenario. And when not the best case scenario? — you can see my thoughts On Stress.

THE ANTIFRAGILITY OF THE MUSHROOM

The reishi or lingzhi mushroom (Ganoderma lucidum) and the turkey tail mushroom are examples of botanical medicines commonly referred to as adaptogens that, by the standards of Taleb and herbalists like Renee Davis, seem to act as agents of antifragility. Both of these fungi stimulate a body’s immune response to strengthen the host’s defense against bacterial, viral, fungal, and parasitic infections, and help the central nervous system to exhibit stronger resilience to stressors (Chen et al, 2014).

All of these beneficial factors have most often landed reishis and turkey tails in the category of both immunomodulators and adaptogens, and I would argue that by virtue of both of these attributes, they also qualify as antifragiles like Davis does. By building up the body’s ability to be resilient to unexpected punches such as sickness and psychological trauma, they in turn make the body a vessel capable of antifragility by developing pathways that can stand up to said punches next time. I think this concept adds something knew to our understanding of herbal pharmacology, in the nuanced way of things that already exist but just haven’t had a word to describe them yet.

Davis puts it well when she calls this class of mushrooms “fitness for the immune system” and writes:

“Learning about Turkey Tail mushrooms is a welcome lesson in antifragility. Antifragility refers to the concept that certain systems thrive from shocks, volatility, and stressors in the environment. We see this phenomenon in post-traumatic growth...evolutionary paths of species, and adaptive mechanisms in human bodies. We not only tolerate shock, but we need a bit of it.”

Interestingly, in the Chinese tradition, the term lingzhi signifies “the essence of immortality … long regarded as the herb of spiritual potency, symbolizing success, well-being, divine power, and longevity” (Wachtel-Galor et al, 2011). While speculative in nature, these factors could be considered antifragile attributes of the reishi mushroom, applied energetically.

When you think of it spiritually and energetically, many herbs are thought of as enhancing the spirit, like roses, rosemary, lemonbalm, licorice, and essentially all tonic herbs (any herb thought of as holistically beneficial for the whole body and safe to take on a daily basis) and so many others, building a gift for antifragility in the host.

THE DANGER OF SAMENESS

The way Taleb describes it, the concept of antifragility can be well illustrated with examples of systems like economic ecosystems that benefit from market volatility, and respond negatively to prolonged homogeny. The human body is the same in that a homogenous diet of prolonged intake of say, refined carbohydrates (of any one thing really) may negatively respond by developing something like candida overgrowth while a varied diet can promote better gut diversity and therefore a more resilient gut. In agriculture, monocultures like what’s happened with the banana puts it at risk for a situation like the Bananapocalypse. In social systems, sameness obviously breeds social viruses like discrimination, xenophobia, and intolerance.

We understand by now that antifragility is the ability to roll with unexpected punches and grow stronger as a result of them — but it’s important to point out that, were it to come to a prolonged period of repeated stress, suffering, or trauma, antifragility would cease to apply as the whole concept of antifragility relies on a certain expectation of volatility and randomness rather than sameness.

THE BEAUTY OF INTERCONNECTEDNESS

ILLUSTRATION BY PAULA SCHULTZ

Another factor important to the concept of antifragility is interconnectedness and the strength born from it, as applied to a superorganism or supercomputer type of system. As the mycologist Paul Stamets has said, “the invention of the computer Internet is an inevitable consequence of a previously proven biologically successful model” — here, like I wrote about earlier in The Web, he’s talking about how the fungal threads underground called mycelia allow plants to communicate, share nourishment, and fight toxins with each other, all while physically separated, by using those threads to connect their roots.

When you take this existence of the vast network of mycelia connecting plants, you can see how this fungal network might actually build antifragility for a plant system, and how this concept can symbolize the way fungal medicine and tonic herbs may build antifragility within the human body and spirit.

SOURCES

Chen, S., Chang, C., Hung, M., Chen, S., Wang, W., Tai, C., & Lu, C. (2014). The Effect of Mushroom Beta-Glucans from Solid Culture ofGanoderma lucidumon Inhibition of the Primary Tumor Metastasis. Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 1-7.

Wachtel-Galor, S., Yuen, J., Buswell, J., & Benzie, I. (2011). Ganoderma lucidum (Lingzhi or Reishi). CRC Press/Taylor & Francis. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK92757/

Davis, R., Turkey Tail Mushrooms and the Antifragility of the Immune System. Journal of the American Herbalist Guild, 12(2), 31-37.

Nassim Taleb: A Definition of Antifragile and its Implications. (2014). Farnam Street. Retrieved from https://fs.blog/2014/04/antifragile-a-definition/

ON STRESS

The Biology of Stress

In discussing the historical context of stress, Hans Selye’s now infamous letter to the magazine Nature in 1936 has to be mentioned. Selye was a widely respected endocrinologist and pathologist who some called the “Einstein of medical research.”

Selye’s letter discussed the physical manifestations that had been observed in the body in response to stress:

• enlarged adrenal glands,

• lipid discharge from the adrenals, and

• gastric ulcers in the digestive system.

This little story took up less than a full page in the magazine, yet was considered historic. Why? Because it was the first ever scientific recognition of the then novel idea that stress might have an actual physical effect the body, the whole notion of biological stress as yet unfathomed until then, or at least unstudied. The reality of biological stress was something Selye believed to be hugely important. As he noted,

“Stress in health and disease is medically, sociologically, and philosophically the most meaningful subject for humanity that I can think of.”

The paper opened the door for a wave of medical research into the subject of stress and how it manifests physiologically in the body, both short- and long-term. The general adaptation syndrome or stress response, as Selye came to call it, recognized not just the existence of immediate biological stress but stress as something capable of causing lasting physical consequences, in all areas of the body — his definition for the stress response at first being “the non-specific neuroendocrine response of the body” after which he quickly discarded the word neuroendocrine, recognizing that almost every other system of the body was involved.

Duh right? It’s no surprise to anyone that stress can take physical shape. It probably wasn’t a surprise in 1936 either; it might have just been the first time someone was able to find a way to prove it in a way that resonated with science, a field mainly distrusting of the types of things you can’t see with your eyes. Anyone who has experienced a panic attack, butterflies in the stomach, a tension headache, or restless leg syndrome — in other words, most people on planet earth — could argue the inherent truth of biological stress from their own lived experience.

But could stress really cause conditions more far off, more serious than that, like disease?

Yes, actually. One person who thinks so is a psychology professor Sheldon Cohen. Cohen conducts research at Carnegie Mellon and has taken up Selye’s mantle in the study of biological stress for the past 30+ years, recently (in 2012) drawing conclusions that chronic psychological stress can cause the body to lose the ability to regulate the inflammatory response, and that “the effects of psychological stress on the body's ability to regulate inflammation can promote the development and progression of disease." Cohen and his team have since concluded that particular conditions like depression, cardiovascular disease, arthritis, peptic ulcers, irritable bowel, and diabetes are among the most connected to chronic states of stress.

This simple concept is one many people have heard by now, but is revolutionary in that it provides a basis for understanding a major potential source, or contributing factor, to many chronic conditions.

Was Selye Woo Woo, or Just Smart?

But what’s most interesting to me about Selye’s feelings on stress were his assertions about the solutions for it:

• Close study of nature — as Jackson (2012) explained, “close study of nature was something Selye argued would allow people to derive some general philosophic lesson, some natural rules of conduct, in the permanent fight between altruistic and egotistic tendencies, which account for most of the stress in interpersonal relations.”

• Collective survival, interpersonal altruism, and mutual interdependence

• A fulfilled need for self-expression

• A life not marred or cut short by the stresses of senseless struggles

• "Ultimately striving for, and dispensing, a feeling of gratitude.”

What now? Could this be an Einstein-level scientist proposing in 1936 that the solution for stress was paying attention to nature, group interdependence, self-expression (art therapy!), gratitude, and a life that isn’t weight down by senseless struggles? It’s not like these types of solutions haven’t been figured out by countless spiritualists and others over the years, but this was a MAN OF SCIENCE over 80 years ago, arguing for a lot of the practices being used in alternative medicine today that much of mainstream medicine continues to see as froo froo. Not to go down THAT road, but just saying.

The Inequity of Stress

As Nelson (2013) writes: “we endure a stressor, we take time to recover (provided we are healthy enough) and we end up on the other side, better than we were before.” This is the definition of resilience, or actually, of antifragility, which I write about next. It doesn’t always work that way, of course, but this is the goal, the ideal, given all the right circumstances.

The issue with this conclusion is that the solution isn’t always so easy. Not everyone has the luxury of curating a life free of stress — this is the problem I have with some healing movements presenting a polished, sunlit image of health that has a way of equating directly with wealth. I think it’s important to point out that stress-related disease is a health inequity issue for many who are marginalized and underserved, facing chronic stressors such as housing instability and systemic discrimination that can’t be fixed with a morning sun salutation and a $9 green juice — that any hope in helping those who need it most demands a rethinking of what can realistically be done for those among us suffering the most.

In health policy and elsewhere, these inequities are considered components of social determinants of health which are known to have huge effects on quality of life, physical health, and emotional wellbeing.

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Where the presence of a chronic stressor isn’t a circumstance that can be eliminated, what can be done? Not to write a totally socialist manifesto, but this is one way socialism gets to the heart of this problem by literally sharing the wealth. This idea has been proven by efforts like like “Mincome,” a guaranteed minimal income experiment in Canada in the 1970s that gave money to low-income residents, leading to a decline in hospitalization rates, consultations for mental health diagnoses, and school dropouts, and other studies showing that low income people when given a little more money tend to spend it wisely.

“While everyone seems to have advice for the poor on how to live, evidence shows that, given a little more money, they make choices that promote their families’ well-being. As good medical practice involves trusting patients’ wisdom about their own bodies, good social policy should respect the wisdom of our neighbors about their lives.”

If we can find ways of eliminating senseless struggles — housing, healthcare, and financial instabilities, for instance, by nature senseless in a society with plenty to go around, if resources are ethically allocated — by using such practices that Selye proposed so long ago, like fostering group interdependence in communities, increasing access to natural environments, building opportunity and time for self-expression, and showing gratitude for one another as we go about collective survival, we just might help to decrease the chronic stress and the conditions that derive out of it — preventive care at its best is this big, and this inclusive.

The Gut of Stress

In recognizing the many systems of the body involved in the stress response, Selye made some interesting connections between stress and the digestive system — such as the formation of acute erosions he noted in the digestive tract following stress and alarm, an early description of what’s now commonly called leaky gut. In speaking of this, he described the stress response as most closely resembling a histamine toxicity reaction — symptoms of which include nausea, abdominal cramps, and diarrhea, early descriptions of symptoms that now fall under irritable bowel.

Add to this that when stressful events occur, the body reacts by pumping adrenaline and cortisol into the bloodstream. Cortisol regulates blood sugar and also has the important job of turning off inflammation. But with chronic stress, not only is blood sugar not properly regulated (exacerbating cravings, causing energy crashes, etc), but cells and tissues become desensitized to cortisol, another resistance that can, in Cohen’s words, “cause inflammation to go wild," a prolonged state of which “damages blood vessels and brain cells, leads to insulin resistance (a precursor to diabetes) and promotes painful joint diseases.”

We now also know that the excess of cortisol also leads to an increase in a neurotransmitter called glutamate, and that excess glutamate creates free radicals that attack brain cells in much the same way that excess oxygen causes metal to rust — now a known comorbidity of leaky gut, aptly called leaky brain.

The Cycle of Stress

These things have a way of exacerbating themselves, making pinpointing a single source difficult — for instance, stress can also increase cravings for refined sugar and carbs because the energy it takes to process the response to stress can use up such massive amounts of glucose that need to be replenished for the body to go on functioning — unfortunately high intakes of these can unleash little proteins called cytokines, which also (sad trombone…) trigger inflammation.

This can become an unfortunate cycle, ie:
chronic stress → chronic cravings for/intake of sweets and refined foods +/or chronic inflammation
→ insulin resistance, cortisol resistance, and impaired ability to process sugar +/or inflammatory conditions
→ more chronic stress (now brought to you its own symptoms)
…and ♺ 

🤯

The Electricity of Stress

The human body is essentially an energetic mass that acts as an electrical conductor, like a complex lightning rod. Like I wrote about in the previous post, our cells are specialized to conduct electrical currents. Electricity is required for the nervous system to send signals throughout the body and brain, making it possible for us to move, think, and feel.

As far as electricity is concerned our bodies have basically a very low conductivity most of the time, putting out about 100 watts of power while at rest, about the same as a ceiling fan. For short periods, like a few hours of jogging, we can be using up to 300-400 watts, like a blender on medium — and in the case of very short bursts of energy, like sprinting, we can get up to a full 2,000 watts.

But then there’s nervous energy — electricity without an outlet. We now know that stress causes the electrical activity in the brain, creating excesses of beta waves that cause anxiety and insomnia, weakens memory, heightens emotion, and fortifies the area of your brain called the amygdala — the brain’s fear center. Nervous energy also increases activity in the nervous and cardiovascular systems, causing increased heart rate and agitation.

This is My Brain on Stress

I am writing this piece of the post in the midst of a full-on panic attack. I won’t go into the details, but it’s about a missed deadline, something probably most people (except the extremely responsible — please teach me your ways) can relate to.

After I pour my energy into sending out an electronic panic attack of messages explaining the oversight and requesting an extension, I get up and, it being midnight and an inappropriate time for any hysterical phone calls, have done all I can do for the moment. Fresh out of distractions and left only with my panic, I begin to breathe quick shallow breaths, dramatically throw off my sweater, and begin the spiral of self loathing.

As I react I know what it happening in my body: My adrenal glands are enlarging and releasing lipids, some of which are a form of lipid called steroids which carry steroid hormones cortisol and adrenaline, produced in the zona fasciculata of the adrenal cortex, electrified into being by my stress. Yes, THIS IS A NERD REPORTING. But, this is helping! So, I’ll keep going.

I know that increasing perspiration is a stress response that causes the body’s water to be eliminated through the skin rather than through the kidneys — so that you don’t have to stop to pee in the midst of defending yourself from or escaping harm. This would be helpful if this stressor was a tiger and not a deadline. I know that another stress response is increased respiration and heart rate, meant to shunt blood and oxygen to the parts more necessary for emergency action, and away from those that aren’t, which both cause the body's temperature to increase.

I also know that a second reason for increased perspiration is to help cool the body down, and that all of these are reasons for my shallow breathing, instant sweating, and dramatic sweater removal. I know that the extra beta waves and adrenaline are what’s put me in a heightened state of emotion with thoughts moving through my head like cars on a freeway. And I know that the activated amygdala is why I feel like my life will literally be over if I don’t get an extension.

This is how a stressor can becomes an energetic force — an actual source of electricity.

The Invisibility of Stress

Moving on — the extension was granted, if you care to know! — let’s go for a second to the truly tiny, unseen world of stress.

It’s true, stress can affect our bodies — we have all experienced this. But what may not be known is that stress can effect us on a cellular level, in ways that can’t be acutely felt. For instance, a temperature increase of a few degrees can cause cell proteins to unravel, stop functioning, and potentially kill the cell. Stress can also cause the shortening of telomeres, the caps on the ends of chromosomes (sometimes likened to the ends of shoelaces), causing cells to age and die prematurely and potentially contributing to associated conditions like arthritis, hypertension, and diabetes. In the worst case scenario, a cell may switch from a protective response to a pathway called apoptosis, essentially turning it to a bomb that self-destructs.

The body is a wonderful, complex, super smart machine, but it does have some unfortunate design drawbacks. For one, whether a stressor is a real and present danger or not, it’s often perceived the same way by the body’s central nervous system, so the response is inherently the same — basically all the things I’ve described above happen whether you’re facing a tiger or a deadline. But what we’re talking about here is not the one-time scenarios, like a single missed deadline, but the prolonged stress of things like financial hardships, demanding jobs, long-term traumas, the pressure of providing for a family, etc — the invisible, but present tigers lurking in the shadows of the mind and our cells quietly responding without our notice until things get to a tipping point.

IN CLOSING…

So, we know now many parts of the stress equation. But how do we get to the beginning? Like a contaminated river, the best place to start is not downstream where the fish are dying, but at the source. The source will be unique for every person, so person-centered care that considers this is essential.

On top of that, we need to keep fighting for policies that spread resources like housing and healthcare accessibility and proper minimum wage — lacks of these are true contaminants that unfairly make the most vulnerable populations more prone to illness, and we must stand up to this for the sake of those who need it.

If you’re feeling stressed, I would love to meet with you and help you get to the source. Check out my APPOINTMENTS page here.

ON THE SUBTLE BODIES

THIS BEAUTIFUL SHRIMP CAN SEE YOUR AURA

The human body is surrounded by a bio-energetic field, the “biofield,” or what’s sometimes called bioluminescence naturally emanating from the body, undetectable to the naked (human) eye, yet thought to be visible to certain species of shrimp, moth, and other creatures, most who could fit in the palm of our hands. Unlike us they possess extra photoreceptors and thermographic sensors and see with what’s called Extreme Spectral Richness. A few humans are able to pick up on faint versions of the biofield, but most can’t, at least not visually.

In video games a force field is often invoked as a magic weapon to protect the player from an enemy. What we might not realize is that we have such magic weapons that exist for us already. Whether or not we can see it, we do not end at our skin, or our hair or fingertips. Instead we grow — glow, actually, outward. In energy work these unseen layers are called the Subtle Bodies, or sometimes the energetic bodies. When you hear about a person’s energy “filling up the room,” giving off bad vibes, or exuding peace, this is the wide berth of their Subtle Bodies being described.

In 2009, Japanese scientists captured the first ever images of bioluminescence using special camera techniques and, as they said in the beginning of one of their followup papers, found that “The human body literally glimmers” (Kobayashi, 2009).

As Kafatos (2015) states in the paper Biofield Science: Current physics perspectives.:

“Evidence for the existence of the biofield now exists, and current theoretical foundations are now being developed. The term biofield describes a field of energy and information, both putative and subtle, that regulates the homeodynamic function of living organisms and may play a substantial role in understanding and guiding health processes.”

THE BODY ELECTRIC

In this field of thought, the human electromagnetic field is made up of two things: the vibrational energy of the body that creates a magnetic field around it, and the results of all of our bodily processes like respiration, digestion, circulation, and nerves that undergo an almost constant series of electrochemical reactions. This bio-energetic field is more informally called an aura, a Greek word meaning “breeze.” Whatever you call it, it tends to extend about 4 to 5 feet outside the body, and it is believed that all plants and animals possess one.

In fact so many cultures and religions have referenced the existence of the human energy field, from the coronas surrounding Judeo-Christian saints and mystics to Pythagoras’ “luminous body” that the authors of the book Future Science were able to compile a list of 97 different cultures, religions, and bodies of scientific thought that each call the human energy field by a different name.

As Cyndi Dale describes in the article Energetic Anatomy: A Complete Guide to the Human Energy Fields and Etheric Bodies, “There are actually independent etheric fields around every vibrating unit of life, from a cell to a plant to a person, as well as a specific etheric field that is connected to the body.” Etheric fields is another term interchangeable with subtle bodies. Etheric comes from the word ether, an old physics word for the substance formerly believed to permeate all space, between all particles of matter, whose vibrations create light and electromagnetic energy.

The electromagnetic field was investigated in the 1800s by James Clerk Maxwell, one of the fathers of electricity. Maxwell developed the four Equations of Light which essentially proved that electric and magnetic fields could be unified into one, and that the field they created traveled through empty space in waves. This continues to be studied by researchers who consistently identify electromagnetic fields in and of the human body and other living organisms.

As Dr. Beverly Rubik writes in Measurement of the Human Biofield and Other Energetic Instruments, the biofield is naturally elusive. “We cannot isolate it or analyze it comprehensively. As John Muir wrote, ‘if we try to pick out any thing by itself, we find it hitched to every thing else in the universe’ (Muir, 1911). For a field, this connection is especially true, given that, regardless of its source, it travels outwards to infinity, interacts with other fields by superposition, and interacts with matter along the way.” However, as elusive as it may be, the human biofield is still proven and recorded time and time again. Many believe that the more recent recognitions of this ancient concept is a big piece of current and future medicine.

AS ABOVE, SO BELOW

Like light passing out of a prism, the Subtle Bodies are often conceived as 7 layers, each associated with the 7 colors of the rainbow and the 7 chakras, used more as symbolic interpretation than as hard fact — but do align with Dr. Kim Bonghan’s notion that the human body’s meridians, like chakras, act as liaisons between the etheric energy field and the physical body — ie, “The etheric body creates the meridians, which in turn form the physical body” (Dale). This relates to a similar notion by scientist Rupert Sheldrake in the early 1980s, who described how all living organisms, from bacterial cells to full grown hearts, develop according to a unique blueprint downloaded from the cloud, almost like 3D printers work — Sheldrake called this cloud the morphic energy field. Nowadays it’s accepted that every single cell we’re made up of carries its own electromagnetic field — with healthy cell able to generate 80 or 100 millivolts of power, and a cancer cell generating more like 20 or 25. When we are sick, we literally operate at a lower frequency.

EXHAUST SYSTEM

What does this have to do with healing though? Everyone thinks of this a little differently. For me, I think of snow. If you’ve ever seen snow in late winter, you know about the exhaust buildup that accumulates on what was once pure looking snow. What I visualize when I think of the Subtle Bodies is the exhaust of the world’s murky energies coating them like exhaust collecting on the outside of a prism, obscuring it from allowing light through, preventing it from displaying the full spectrum of color — on the surface, played out often as the full spectrum of emotion and vitality. Doesn’t it make sense that we might feel (pardon the awful pun but)…uhh, exhausted when this is happening? Just about every one of my clients, friends, and family members report this one single symptom above all else: fatigue.

We are, in a profound kind of way, exhausted.

What’s the exhaust? So many possible things. The news. Noise pollution. The negative energies of other people walking around emitting their exhaust. The shared exhaustion of our world in its current state. The near constant barrage of human rights violations to digest, defend, and deflect. Financial burdens. Sleep deprivation. Forgotten passwords. Substance abuse. Heartbreak.

With accumulation, what might pass through the prism is a murky light. Energy workers sometimes report this murky kind of light energy in people whose bodies or minds have been depleted from illness or suffering. An energy worker I met recently described it as the difference between a clear bottle of water, and one containing a thick, murky fluid — one light and the other heavy and sticky.

It’s said that each layer has different a flavor of muck that can coat it:
Etheric body: Affected by substance abuse and trauma
Emotional Body: Affected by unresolved issues and emotional abuse
Mental Body: Affected by negative thought patterns and PTSD
Astral Body: Affected by negative dreams and past life experiences
Etheric Template Body: Affected by negative sounds and vibrations
Celestial Body: Affected by lack of meaning or higher purpose
Causal Body: Affected by doubt or confusion about your place in the world
Physical Body: Affected by nutrient imbalances, lack of exercise, poor sleep, and injury

Just like a cell has to be healthy to generate more voltage, the energetic layers must be nourished to operate at a higher frequency. Where we are at a cellular level dictates what goes on with the Subtle Bodies and the type of energy other people, while they may not see it, will often feel coming off you.

HEALING IS NOT SELFISH

While energy might an elusive, typically invisible force, it nonetheless exists, perpetuates, and can be absorbed. You know when you feel the positive energy that makes you want to be near someone, just like you feel it when the heavy energy of a person or a place has stuck to you. Desiring to be one of those emitting positive energy is in itself a gift to the world. Understanding and unraveling the traumas that impacts your energy field can take time and work, but it’s worth it, and not only for yourself. I mention this because it can be one of the biggest motivators for healing, remembering that you are a part that affects the whole. If there’s any hope for this world, as many people as possible will catch on to this.

On that thought, when growing (or sometimes struggling to grow) plants, I like to remember something an herbal teacher once told me, which was simple but felt important — that plants want to survive, and also in a larger sense, evolve. And by growing and evolving, they help to cleanse the world and provide it nourishment. We are like this, too and like Busy Phillips would say, I am here for it.

This is one reason for the importance of Maslow’s hierarchy, the popular theory of human motivation, having its pinnacle at self-actualization:

My auric bodies after completing an Inorganic Chemistry exam. (If you can’t already tell, I was very, very tired.)

WHAT ABOUT IT?

Especially for mood and mental health, which can source their origins to both the physical and energetic bodies, one of the greatest tools we can give ourselves it to learn techniques — many of them completely free or cheap, and non-invasive — of coping and to practice them regularly. This strengthens the body’s stress response system, like a mood balancing muscle, to maintain balance and initiate healing.

This is why I wrote the previous post about forest, sound, and energy therapy, all three of them free, completely non-invasive ways of building this muscle. I strongly believe healing should be available and affordable to all, which is one reason I am obsessive about sharing these with everyone I know — and because to be truthful, they helped get me through the last few years of school while I was often broke and anxious as hell. They helped me feel grounded, motivated, and less hateful toward people at the grocery. They were a missing link — the piece that after months of studying nutrition and herbs I felt was still missing.

The truth is food and herbs can’t accomplish all this. This is because, as explored above, we are much more than just a physical body. Not acknowledging this would be like cleaning just the inside of a window when it’s the outside that gets hit first by the weather.

My goal is to work with people through all of their layers, help them meet and access their heightened selves, weather the weather, and shine all the way through, filling rooms and the earth with those good, good vibrations. 

SOURCES

Kobayashi, M., Kikuchi, D., & Okamura, H. (2009). Imaging of Ultraweak Spontaneous Photon Emission from Human Body Displaying Diurnal Rhythm. Plos ONE, 4(7), e6256.

Kafatos, M., Chevalier, G., Chopra, D., Hubacher, J., Kak, S., & Theise, N. (2015). Biofield Science: Current physics perspectives. Global Advances In Health And Medicine, 4(1_suppl), gahmj.2015.011.

Rubik, B. (2004). Measurement of the Human Biofield and Other Energetic Instruments. Energetics and Spirituality, Chapter 20. St. Louis, MO: Mosby Publishers.

Dale, R. (2018). Energetic Anatomy: A Complete Guide to the Human Energy Fields & Etheric Bodies. Conscious Lifestyle Magazine.

HOW SOUND, FOREST & ENERGY THERAPY PROMOTE HEALING 100% NON-INVASIVELY

HOW SOUND, FOREST & ENERGY THERAPY PROMOTE MENTAL & PHYSICAL HEALING 100% NON-INVASIVELY

"I experienced some of the deepest feelings of peace and wellness during this session."

BOOK A SESSION

SOUND BATHING

Sound baths are a practice that immerse you in healing frequencies known to convert beta waves to theta and alpha waves in the mind. Beta waves are active when the mind is most alert, and theta and alpha waves are active when the mind is in a state of relaxation. Elevated beta waves can make the mind anxious, distracted, and cluttered. Theta and alpha waves do the opposite, helping to relieve anxiety, improve concentration, and clear the mind. They can also bring blood pressure to a more restful state that promotes natural healing. Sound baths are devised to bring about this change to bring the anxious or distracted mind and body to a state of much needed calm and concentration.

EVIDENCE OF SOUND BATHING'S HEALTH BENEFITS

Stress: Frequency-Based Light & Sound Neurotherapy (LSN) Research: A Review of the Research (2017) “... researchers have also found that frequency-based light and/or sound stimulation increases brain metabolism and cerebral blood flow. On the biochemical front, Kumano and associates found that multiple LSN sessions generated positive changes in the brain by increasing B-endorphin levels and decreasing plasma cortisol, a marker for stress.”

Anxiety: A prospective, randomised, controlled study examining binaural beat audio and pre-operative anxiety in patients undergoing general anaesthesia for day case surgery (2005) “Recently, it has been demonstrated that music can be used successfully to relieve patient anxiety before operations, and that audio embedded with tones that create binaural beats within the brain of the listener decreases subjective levels of anxiety in patients with chronic anxiety states.”

Depression: Is Alpha Wave Neurofeedback Effective with Randomized Clinical Trials in Depression? A Pilot Study (2011) “Our results indicated that the asymmetry neurofeedback training increased the relative right frontal alpha power, and it remained effective even after the end of the total training sessions ... The neurofeedback training had profound effects on emotion and cognition …. [and] replicated earlier findings that enhancing the left frontal activity led to alleviation of depressive symptoms.”

Creativity: A theory of alpha/theta neurofeedback, creative performance enhancement, long distance functional connectivity and psychological integration (2009) “Working memory and meditative bliss, representing cognitive and affective domains, respectively, involve coupling between frontal and posterior cortices, exemplify a role for theta and alpha waves in mediating the interaction between distal and widely distributed connections. It is posited that this mediation in part underpins the integrational attributes of alpha–theta training in optimal performance and psychotherapy, creative associations in hypnogogia, and enhancement of technical, communication and artistic domains of performance in the arts.”

FOREST THERAPY & GROUNDING

Forest therapy doesn’t mean talking to a therapist in the woods (unless you have a radical therapist without borders, which is sort of what I aim to be), but immersing yourself in the forest and allowing your senses to soak it in. Practicing it means spending time in the forest without an agenda (no reaching the summit in under two hours, no tracking your steps) outside of consciously slowing and taking in your surroundings — fresh air, sunlight, sights, smells, sounds — and making contact with the soil, the trees, the plants, and as corny as it might sound, yourself (and any human or animal friends you might be with, or encounter). 

As for earthing, this has close ties to the concept of forest therapy and is essentially the practice of putting your bare skin in contact with the earth to reduce pain and improve immune function, like taking a half hour every day to walk barefoot in the grass. This also sounds too simple to be effective, but it has some incredible implications for health.  

Forest therapy and earthing are such simple concepts that it’s almost silly to give them names. However, there is great power in their sheer simplicity, and a lot of power in giving something a name, I’ve been realizing. This is a common tool with anxiety and other mood disorders, like this shero who named her anxiety Clive. Now that these practices have been given accepted names, they’ve become concepts we can more easily talk about and appreciate — and that can be studied by researchers and proven as beneficial to human wellness, for those who like the support of studies, which I actually do — science is magic.

Over the years and across the world the practice of deriving healing from the forest has taken on many names, but the names that have become popular recently have originated from Alaska and Japan.

Alaskan naturalist and filmmaker Steve Kroschel recently popularized the terms “earthing” and “grounding” after his personal discovery of the benefits of connecting directly with the earth, often barefoot in soil and mud, after seeing how it affected him and others in the small town of Haines in Alaska’s rural wilderness, seeming to shorten illness, reduce pain, and contribute to overall healing. In the 1980s the Japanese Forestry Agency coined a phrase to encourage citizens, many suffering from skyrocketing stress levels in the economic boom, to spend more time in nature. They called it shinrin-yoku, which translates to "forest bathing."

In other cultures, it has been called forest therapy, nature therapy, and many other things in between. As the Association for Nature and Forest Therapy writes, “There is a long tradition of this in cultures throughout the world. It’s not just about healing people; it includes healing for the forest.” I like the name forest bathing because it evokes a great image and goes well with the practice of sound bathing, so I want to acknowledge that I have at times use this translation from the Japanese interchangeably with forest and nature therapy, but am now moving away from this phrase in an effort to stop borrowing language from a culture that isn’t my own.

EVIDENCE OF FOREST THERAPY’S HEALTH BENEFITS

In studies, forest therapy has shown incredible effectiveness for lowering heart rate, lowering stress hormones (cortisol, adrenaline, and noradrenaline), strengthening the immune system, boosting NK (natural killer) cell activity, improving mood, and reducing chronic stress. Some of these beneficial effects have be found to last up to 7 days. And interestingly, some are attributed to natural essential oils emitted by trees, called phytoncides, meaning that breathing in trees is actually healing.

Prevention: The physiological effects of Shinrin-yoku (taking in the forest atmosphere of forest bathing): evidence from field experiments in 24 forests across Japan (2010): “...results show that forest environments promote lower concentrations of cortisol, lower pulse rate, lower blood pressure, greater parasympathetic nerve activity, and lower sympathetic nerve activity than do city environments. These results will contribute to the development of a research field dedicated to forest medicine, which may be used as a strategy for preventive medicine.”

Chronic Stress: Psychological effects of forest environments on healthy adults: Shinrin-yoku (forest-air bathing, walking) as a possible method of stress reduction (2007): “...forest environments are advantageous with respect to acute emotions, especially among those experiencing chronic stress. Accordingly, shinrin-yoku may be employed as a stress reduction method, and forest environments can be viewed as therapeutic landscapes. Therefore, customary shinrin-yoku may help to decrease the risk of psychosocial stress-related diseases, and evaluation of the long-term effects of shinrin-yoku is warranted.”

Immunity: Effect of phytoncide from trees on human natural killer cell function (2009) “We previously reported that the forest environment enhanced human natural killer (NK) cell activity, the number of NK cells, and intracellular anti-cancer proteins in lymphocytes, and that the increased NK activity lasted for more than 7 days after trips to forests both in male and female subjects. To explore the factors in the forest environment that activated human NK cells, in the present study we investigate the effect of essential oils from trees on human immune function...Phytoncide exposure significantly increased NK activity and the percentages of NK, perforin, granulysin, and granzyme A/B-expressing cells, and significantly decreased the percentage of T cells, and the concentrations of adrenaline and noradrenaline in urine. These findings indicate that phytoncide exposure and decreased stress hormone levels may partially contribute to increased NK activity."

EVIDENCE OF EARTHING'S HEALTH BENEFITS

The effects of grounding (earthing) on inflammation, the immune response, wound healing, and prevention and treatment of chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases (2015): "Accumulating experiences and research on earthing, or grounding, point to the emergence of a simple, natural, and accessible health strategy against chronic inflammation, warranting the serious attention of clinicians and researchers. The living matrix (or ground regulation or tissue tensegrity-matrix system), the very fabric of the body, appears to serve as one of our primary antioxidant defense systems. As this report explains, it is a system requiring occasional recharging by conductive contact with the Earth’s surface – the “battery” for all planetary life – to be optimally effective."

"I experienced some of the deepest feelings of peace and wellness during this session. Emily's safe and healing presence is one that I trust and appreciate deeply."

- Mariko, a fellow lover of forest therapy who has been such a great gift for exploring this simple, wonderful practice — in fact I have never once spent time with Mariko without spending time in nature, often with her dog Kuma, Japanese for Bear. I was so happy to share these other healing tools with her to add to the forest therapy we already loved to practice.

ENERGY HEALING

The energy healing I like to combine with the two practices above are gentle postures and movements with breathing and meditation designed to reset the human energy field to a state of relaxation and healing, blending elements of energy worker Jason Quitt’s postures, including the Salute to the Sun and the Salute to the Moon, with others I’ve picked up from others, like movements learned from a local teacher that she called “spirit flow” and some that I’ve created inspired by these. While I’ve moved away from bringing qigong or tai chi into these sessions as these are from the Chinese tradition and again, not my own culture to claim, it is another situation where names allows a style of practice used worldwide to be studied and acknowledged for its benefits. Below are some of the ways this modality has been studied.

EVIDENCE OF ENERGY HEALING’S BENEFITS

Anxiety, Depression, and Stress Response: A Comprehensive Review of Health Benefits of Qigong and Tai Chi (2011) “Anxiety decreased significantly for participants practicing Qigong compared to an active exercise group. Depression was shown to improve significantly in studies comparing Qigong to an inactive control … In another study examining blood markers related to stress response, norepinephrine, epinephrine and cortisol blood levels were significantly decreased in response to Qigong compared to a wait-list control group.”

Immunity: A Comprehensive Review of Health Benefits of Qigong and Tai Chi (2011) “Manzaneque et al reported improvements in a number of immune-related blood markers, including total number of leukocytes, number of eosinphils, and number and percentage of monocytes, as well as the complement C3 levels following a 1-month Qigong intervention compared to usual care. Antibody levels in response to flu vaccinations were significantly increased among a Qigong group compared to usual care … similar non-RCTs have suggested that Qigong improves immune function and reduces inflammation profiles as indicated by cytokine and T-lymphocyte subset proportions.”

SOUND, FOREST, AND ENERGY HEALING SESSIONS

I really believe in these practices and am happy to book one of my sessions with you that combine these three modalities. Sessions last 30 - 45 minutes, but I allot an hour to get to/from a wooded area. See my APPOINTMENTS scheduler to book.

THE HISTORY OF CONVENIENCE

In this post, we wander into the Land of Convenience: the history of convenience foods and how they may be incidentally entwined with second wave feminism.

SWINGING DOORS

In the 1960s and 70s, something great and long overdue happened: second-wave feminism. Among other things, the movement sought to dramatically expand a woman’s right to enter areas of the workforce historically constricted to men and began the continuing battle for equal pay.

Tragic as it is that these basic rights seemed so novel such a short time ago, the American woman hardly blinked on her way to claiming these well-deserved opportunities. Doors that had long been closed suddenly swung open and women began to walk through them, emerging out the other side with law degrees and better jobs, hanging up their aprons and replacing them with business attire or long paisley frocks. Women were unmooring from the confines of the home in droves and going out into the world, feeling the wind on their faces. Whether or not they were going to an office, the fact is they were going out. The domino effect of this was palpable — in the forty year stretch starting in 1967, the number of full-time female workers in the US grew from 14.8% to about 45% of the US population, a huge pendulum shift.

GOLDEN ARCHES

Of course, for every action there is a reaction. In this case, the entropy of this moment also opened new doors in product marketing. Suddenly too busy to spend the better part of an afternoon preparing a candlelit Chicken à la King dinner, the working woman became a target for consumer opportunists who wasted no time in seizing this golden moment and filling it with foods designed and advertised around one key quality: convenience. The golden moment called for the golden arches and the golden glow of the Twinkie snack cake. Swanson TV dinners, Oscar Meyer Wieners, Wonder Bread and JELLO pudding flooded the aisles, shouting of convenience, and also a novel, “enriched” version of nutrition.

Almost every domino has one just behind it, and some rows of dominoes, triggered at the same crossroads, both fall at once. This is how I see it that the junk food liberation happened alongside women’s liberation, with the tiles of the second World War, the Depression, the first World War, women’s suffrage, the industrial revolution, and so on fallen over behind them.

To give an idea of how parallel these two movements were: in the same year (1963) that Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, giving voice to the widespread discontent of the bored American housewife, McDonald’s served its 1 billionth burger on the “The Art Linkletter Show.” Gloria Steinem went undercover as a Playboy Bunny, exposing crooked salaries and treatment. Fruit Loops were invented. Congress passed the Equal Pay Act, enacting a law still fighting for recognition, requiring equal wages for women and men. Chips Ahoy! were introduced. Alice Rossi presented the notorious paper "Equality Between the Sexes: An Immodest Proposal" to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Jello salad became a thing. The Bell Jar was published. Coca Cola came out with TaB, a line of high fructose soda even cheaper than Coke. The Presidential Commission on the Status of Women (PCSW) presented a report to John F. Kennedy documenting discrimination against women. Kennedy accidentally said 'I am a jelly donut' (Ich bin ein Berliner) in a speech to the citizens of Berlin. Ronald McDonald first graced television. Bras burned.

Of course, women’s movements are in no way to be held responsible for the rise of junk food — they just happened to come from the same universe — but there’s no doubt they were entwined. Even as women were starting to enjoy liberation, they were still the primary shoppers. It's not like something crazy like men offering to shop or prepare their own nourishment was sweeping the nation. Also, now many of them were living on their own, because they could finally afford to.

Working women made up an increasingly growing number of bread-winning consumers, while remaining the primary shopper, and naturally, convenience foods were marketed to them. To advertisers, women were more powerful than ever. Oscar Mayer came out with “Sack o’ Sauce in a Can O’ Meat” to “bring you quick meat meals with rich Fresh Cooked flavor!” (literally, just a can of hot dogs with a bag of barbeque sauce). Pop Tarts — “drop ‘em in the toaster!” Heinz tomato ketchup — “still the shortest route to a man’s heart!” Pancho Pantera Chocomilk — “a new super-fortified instant food drink that will make your family TALLER … HEALTHIER … STRONGER!”

THE DAWN OF FORTIFICATION

This brings us to the dawn of fortified foods. Fortified food goes back a little farther than the 1960s, when it gained more popularity. In the 1940s, it had come to light that many Americans seemed to be suffering from vitamin and nutrient deficiencies. This was brought to the government’s attention when men began showing up to the World War II  draft with such poor nutritional status that it concerned the draft board. Thus, the government began to decree that certain foods be enriched with the nutrients people were missing and sponsored programs that did things like enrich all-purpose flour with folic acid, iron, and B vitamins.

So begins a very odd time in food history. Not just for fortification, but for the preservation of the growing lines of processed foods. Rice is enriched with carrot genes. Human hair is extracted of its L-Cysteine to preserve commercial bread. Beaver glands flavor ice cream. Fish bladder extract clarifies hazy beer. Silicone bulks up chicken nuggets. Coal tar and boiled beetle shells add color to candy. Food is Frankensteined into so many bizarre amalgamations, it becomes hard to keep track. This experiment continues to this day.

 At this time, truth in advertising was an even looser concept than it is today, and it was hard to believe what you read on the packaging. (See: Pancho Pantera). But the fortified foods sold well, and the government seemed to remain pretty lenient about claims, up until the early 1970s when it began to crack down.

AMERICA VS THE TWINKIE

Case in point: in 1971, the Federal Trade Commission accused the maker of Wonder Bread and Hostess Snack Cakes of making false nutritional claims about its products and false weight loss claims about the short-lived brand Profile Bread. These brands were all owned by the Continental Baking Company.

Full disclosure: My great grandfather was a vice president at Continental Baking in Kansas City, KS and some in my family like to claim that he is the “father of the Twinkie” (a fact I’ve never been able to substantiate). I have roots in this problem.

Up against the FTC, Continental Baking Company strongly argued their point that “Hostess Snack Cakes were enriched as a direct response to recommendations made by the White House Conference on Food, Nutrition and Health, which called attention to the growing importance of snacks in the nation's diet.” They were not wrong. The recommendations Continental Baking pointed to when defending itself came from the same flour-enriching program the government sponsored in the 1940s.

LET THEM EAT CAKE

So, was it the snack makers that were the problem, or was the nation to blame for demanding snacks in the first place? Or, was it the government pushing an agenda? Not to be a conspiracy theorist, but you can never be too sure.

Perhaps the government was truly concerned for the citizens and thought they were doing right by throwing up their hands and saying, “well, if they’re going to eat snack cakes, we might as well urge companies to inject them with vitamins.” In other words, let them eat cake. Although it might seem obvious now — a wild idea like pointing out that some nutrient deficiencies might stem from the fact that healthy foods were being replaced by snack cakes — convenience food was a fast moving target and trying to go against the grain would have been not only more difficult than injecting cake with vitamins, but also less lucrative. So instead of going against the grain, they went with it, literally.

WHAT’S THE HARM?

But food fortification is well-meaning, right? It isn’t all that bad if it’s getting people the nutrients they’re missing, one way or another? In some cases, no — it has helped reduce conditions like goiter, anemia, and rickets. But in other cases, yes, it is a problem — as Amy Westervelt put it for The Guardian, food fortification is “a solution that became a problem.”

In 2014, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) released a report that cautioned against purchasing fortified foods. As Renee Sharp, research director for EWG and a co-author of the report, said, “The window between what's good for you and what's potentially toxic is actually quite narrow." In particular, high intakes of zinc, niacin and vitamin A have been found to contribute to liver damage and skeletal abnormalities in children. But on a larger scale, it was the shifting from vegetables to processed grains as the vehicles for obtaining vitamins that was the issue.

Of course we could go on and on digging into the roots of the problem, and of course the story can be traced farther back than the 1960s — like notably, war rations of both world wars and the Depression creating food scarcities that probably left a lot people happy to eat anything at all, and making convenient, high calorie foods especially appealing. It’s easy to see how this could set the stage for the 1960s to be a tipping point for convenience — that is, the manufacturers of convenience — to become mightier than ever before.

WHAT NOW?

So where does that leave us?

On the one hand, we now live in a world where corner stores and drive-thrus dominate certain areas of the country, especially in low income neighborhoods. They call these fringe foods, the unfortunate end road of the convenience movement. A dominance of fringe foods creates problems like food deserts where fresh, healthy food is hard to find and gas station specials for a $2 hot dog with a Big Gulp entice people into the myth of convenience that’s cheap to boot, while what’s really happening is economic inequities becoming inequities in people’s health. Without getting too far into it, this is an issue of social and economic justice.

On the other hand, there is a much more positive side to all of this. Here in the present moment, we seem to be in the middle of a natural pendulum shift back to health thanks partly to an amazing resurgence of people seeking natural food, in some ways a necessity born out of these last few decades where we’ve wandered astray into the spooky Land of Convenience. It’s our society in its current moment not just being drawn back to the land, but to self empowerment, body positivity, and a reclaimed participation in their own health, in itself a radical act against the big business of convenience.

Slowly but surely, more and more people are waking up to the fact that while convenience foods may be easy and cheap in the short term, in the long term they can be extremely inconvenient and expensive when it comes to the health problems that can arise from them. This is of course a pretty foundational concept for those already attuned to or working in the world of nutrition and health, but it’s a start, and the momentum for it is only continuing to grow. As we embrace this, what I’d like to see is the movement be more third wave, more intentional about serving low income neighborhoods where affordable, healthy food is most scarce, and build from these places so that access to healthy options isn’t something reserved only for the more fortunate.

Where do you think things are moving?

THE WEB

In the Blue Mountains of Oregon lives a contender for the world’s largest known organism: and believe it or not, it’s … a mushroom. The honey mushroom. Mostly hidden beneath the soil, it stretches its rhizomorphic arms in a web to form a giant mycelium taking up almost 2,400 acres. (A blue whale for reference is only about 0.002 acres. This is a mushroom the size of 1.2 million blue whales we’re talking about). And this mycelium, its branching threads all weaving and linking together, not only resembles the internet, it turns out to actually be one.

Like Einstein’s theory “spooky action at a distance” — where objects separated in space can still interact with each other — these mycelia allow plants to communicate, share nourishment, and fight toxic weeds with each other, all while physically separated, by using their threads to connect the roots of plants. If that sounds like a normal day for you on the internet, you’re not alone. This natural network is what some people call the internet of plants, or even more adorably, the wood wide web.

I will not be the first to point out that a mycelia looks like a neural network, like surges of electricity, or the trees in winter. Even astronomers have begun calling the material they believe holds the universe together the “cosmic web.” And it get even weirder. The mycelia-shaped surge of a single lightning strike can even double some mushroom crops — webs, working together. Turn the lens around and possibly even more amazing is that all of these so closely resemble the intricate, microscopic makeup of our own skin cells, our hairs, our blood vessels, our bones, the neurons moving impulses around our bodies, and the veins and arteries circulating our blood — all. webs. Through and through, it seems that we, and the earth we stand on, is nothing short of a never-ending series of web networks.

mycelium

the world wide web by Hal Burch and Bill Cheswick

And I believe in the idea of webs. Every little bacteria and interaction part of a web, whether we understand it or not. People and the superorganism of the earth that we’re part of, one super-web. A web that exists without the internet or any technology at all; as the micologist Paul Stamets said, “the invention of the computer Internet is an inevitable consequence of a previously proven biologically successful model.” This I believe — that we didn’t invent the internet, but that the internet was our inevitable, somewhat crude attempt at imitating the intelligent webbings of nature and our own bodies — and, most importantly, that an intuitive internet exists outside of that, which allows us to communicate not only with each other, but also with our own bodies. 

This is why I named this business CobwebMD, and why I so believe in the power of the human body and mind to look to itself for healing, and also to look to the earth that it’s part of to help in the healing process.

So that's the story behind CobwebMD. But before I close this out I just want to point out a couple of things:

Whenever you think the world is more powerful than you, remember this: There are 1,000 times more synapses in your own brain than there are stars in the Milky Way. Inside, our neural impulses go around 200 miles an hour, our thoughts an average of 70, and it’s all still way more efficient than a supercomputer. A computer with the capacity of a human brain would need the power of a small hydroelectric plant to run it, while the brain only needs the energy of one dim lightbulb. I believe we are made of some of the most advanced networks, capable of more than we know, not only able to heal but raise ourselves to higher frequencies.  And if you think that the appearance of strengths matters, have you ever watched a spiderweb in the wind? It’s kind of amazing. While branches fall off trees they hang on like little sails,  collecting tiny drops of rain in perfect rows. The mind and body are like this, too. Resilient in their fragility, untethered if the right gust of wind comes along, but also quickly rebuilt. 

But to heal yourself, you really need to be hearing yourself.

Hearing. How do we know if we’re doing that? 

The elusive concept of listening to the body — that’s what I’ll be talking about in my next post. So if you feel like continuing on this cosmic web with me, subscribe below to know when the next posts is up, and thanks so much for reading.

HERBS FOR DREAMING

THE SUBTLE ART OF DREAMING

As a quick follow-up to Herbs for Sleep, I wanted to share a post on my favorite herbs for dreaming: mugwort and damiana.

Dreams hold a lot of importance in certain cultures, like the Achuar people of the Amazon who regard dreams as the bearers of important messages and begin each day with dream sharing, much like the Senoi people of the Malaysian jungle who share their dreams every morning over a communal breakfast. 

In a different tradition, the Aboriginal people of Australia trace their creation back to a time called the Dreamtime, believing the world was formed here within the dreams of the the creator, and that everything on earth also exists in the ongoing realm of the Dreamtime. In some West African belief systems, according to Mary Chinkwita in the book The Usefulness of Dreams, “dreams convey warnings or messages pertaining to one's future. In this process, ancestor spirits act as intermediaries [for the] Supreme Being.”

Here in the US, where the concept of 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep has gained its own kind of mythic importance, we tend to take a different approach to sleep, are much less relaxed about sleep interruptions, and more commonly medicate ourselves into a dreamless darkness. As far as dreams, views like this one shared by the brilliant author Michael Chabon are common:

“Dreams are effluvia, bodily information, to be shared only with intimates and doctors. At the breakfast table, in my house, an inflexible law compels all recountings of dreams to be compressed into a sentence or, better still, half a sentence...Pretty much the only thing I hate more than my own dreams are yours. ‘I was flying over Lake Michigan in a pink Cessna,’ you begin, ‘only it wasn’t really Lake Michigan…,’ and I sink, cobwebbed, beneath a drifting dust of boredom.”

This isn’t to say that there aren’t people in the western world who care about dreams, but that it’s not a big part of our culture to share them with our community. I personally love dreaming and belong to three different dream sharing groups on Facebook, I like hearing about them so much. So there are other dream sharers if you go looking, but in America, you’re probably not going to start your day hearing the next door neighbor’s dream.

In cultures where dreams are more readily shared, celebrated and intertwined into daily life, it also seems to be more natural and accepted for sleep to happen in segments or be interrupted by things like the movements of communal sleeping or the sounds of the forest.

The connection there seems obvious — if you’ve ever experienced the intensity of a cat nap dream, or a night in a tent (or maybe raising a newborn?), it’s easy to imagine how culture-wide sleep conditions like this, which lend themselves to more vivid, memorable dreams, might naturally result in dreams taking on a cultural significance, especially if that culture is communal.

However, this style of sleeping is actually not far off from our own western tradition, not so long ago. In her brilliant article To Dream in Different Cultures, T.M. Luhramm synopses a fascinating anecdote from author Roger Ekirch’s written history of nighttime in the early modern west:

“...people fell asleep not long after dark for the ‘first sleep.’ Then they awoke, somnolent but not asleep, often around midnight, when for a few hours they talked, read, prayed, had sex, brewed beer or burgled. Then they went back to sleep for a shorter period. Mr. Ekirch concludes, ‘There is every reason to believe that segmented sleep, such as many wild animals exhibit, had long been the natural pattern of our slumber before the modern age, with a provenance as old as humankind.’”

It kind of makes you wonder whether our ancestors in the American west ever dream-shared over ye olde hearth during these midnight carousings, and what messages we might be missing out on now if we’re not paying attention? Like many, I believe dreams can serve a lot of important purposes as messages postmarked from the subconscious, untiers of annoying mental knots, revealers of difficult truths, but I have a lot of trouble recalling mine when I wake up. The following are two herbs I've found especially helpful for this common problem.

HERBS FOR DREAMING

If you want to start paying closer attention to your dream life, here are my favorite herbs for dreaming:

Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris): Mugwort is believed to heighten the senses, both increasing the vividness and color of dreams and making them easier to recall. Mugwort is historically associated with the Greek goddess Artemis, who was known to send divine dreams. 

Damiana (Turnera diffusa): Damiana is an herb that can create a pleasantly mild euphoria in waking life, and in dreamland is believed to create more vivid imagery. Some claim it helps them induce lucid dreams, a claim sometimes made for mugwort as well.

Both mugwort and damiana are also indicated for their nervine and anxiolytic effects and are used by some to treat anxiety and depression.

Preparation: Combine 1 TSBP of dried mugwort leaves with 1 TBSP of dried damiana leaves, the fresher the better, and steep in 4-6 ounces of hot water for 10+ minutes. Drink at bedtime.

Sweet dreams, dear reader ☁️ and keep a dream journal by the bed!

HERBS FOR SLEEP

THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP

Did you know that sleep remains, to this day, a biological mystery? According to some researchers like Terese Hammond, director of the USC Sleep Disorders Center, sleep is "one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of science." 

There are plenty of theories about why slumber exists, of course, but the truth is that science has never come to a common consensus. Until recently, it was hardly studied at all.

Historically, a lot of philosophies thought of sleep as a temporary death, or the state between wakefulness and death — sleep as the ultimate limbo. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, "Those who are awake have a single and common world, but in sleep each person turns away from this and enters their own world" — sleep as our own little movie house.

In the realm of Darwinian thought, the reason people began questioning the biological validity of sleep was for the simple reason that it renders one unconscious and prone to attack for so many hours at a time, thus threatening the survival of the species. However, sleep obviously has its biological benefits, as we now know, being vital for the strength of our immune systems, the clarity of our thinking, and functioning of many other arenas of the body.

The Achuar people of the Amazon rainforest believe sleep is a conduit for important messages and warnings, and they begin each day with dream-sharing. The realm of sleeping and dreaming is so important to their culture that it blends with the realm of waking life with much less distinction than in a lot of other cultures.

Why it is we need so much sleep while dolphins, intellectually compared to us, can stay awake for days on end with half their brain asleep, but fruit flies sleep about as much as we do, is one of sleep's many mysteries. Then there is the famous story of Thái Ngọc, the Vietnamese farmer who claims to have inexplicably stopped sleeping one night in 1976 and remained perpetually awake for over 30 years. As National Geographic reported, researchers and physicians confirmed that he indeed was not sleeping, was still in good health, but had "grown to crave dreaming" and felt like a "plant without water." I can imagine living without dreams would feel like something was missing.

But in order to dream, first we must sleep. And this can pose its own unique challenge to many of us. 

According to the Sleep Health Foundation, 1 in 3 Americans experience at least mild insomnia, and according to NPR, about 60 million Americans are affected by chronic sleeplessness each year. Sleeplessness, for those of us who have experienced it, is a silent killer of spirit. And unless we're like Thái Ngọc, it can also wear down our immunity, making us more prone to illness.

HERBS FOR SLEEP

NIGHT 🌙

My personal go-tos for sleep aid are skullcap (Scutellaria laterifolia) and kava kava (Piper methysticum).

Skullcap (alternatively spelled scullcap) can temporarily quiet the racing brain, having effects similar to beta blockers. According to Green (2000), skullcap is a mild nervine sedative appropriate for relieving nervous irritability, tension, and restlessness.

Kava kava heavies the head and eyes and helps lead to sleep. According to Balick (2014), kava kava contains kavalactones, phytochemicals known to relax muscles, and is traditionally used for treating nervousness, anxiety, stress, and restlessness. Balick also cites clinical trials that show kava kava to be highly effective for relieving anxiety and significantly relaxing muscles.

Method: When I experience sleeplessness, I keep skullcap tincture by the bedside and take a dropperful before bed. I find this has a noticeably drowsying effect for about 10-20 minutes. I've also had success brewing strong cups of kava kava tea just before bedtime, keeping them to 4-6 ounces so I'm not woken for a midnight bathroom trip. I like to keep a bit of the tea and/or the skullcap tincture at the bedside, as another dose of tea or half a dropperful of the tincture can help ease the body back into a sleep state if I find myself awake again.

MORNING ☀️

If you're experiencing chronic sleeplessness and still need to get through the day, I like to begin the morning with stinging nettle (Urtica dioica). Nettle is a tonic herb with impressive nutritive and energizing value, even more densely nutrient-packed than blue-green algae, containing high levels of iron and vitamins A, B, C, and K, among other phytochemical content including amino acids, fatty acids, carotenoids, nutrients, and phenolic compounds. One quart of nettle infusion contains more than 1,000 mg of calcium, 15,000 IU of vitamin A, 760 milligrams of vitamin K, 10% of your RDA of protein, and a rich amount of B vitamins. For micronutrients, it contains selenium, sulphur, zinc, chromium, and boron (Balick, 2014; Rutto, 2013; Weed, 2008).

According to Susun Weed, dried nettle “makes a nourishing herbal infusion that packs more energy per cup than any stimulant, and without the downside of caffeine or stimulating herbs like cayenne and ginger. Tired teenagers, sleep-deprived new moms, stressed executives, wakeful menopausal gals, and wise women of all ages depend on stinging nettle to restore mood, replenish energy, and guarantee sound sleep” (Weed, 2008). The main thing to be careful with when using nettle is that it’s also a natural diuretic, so it's good to stick to morning nettles, as ingesting them later in the day could lead to that unwanted midnight pee.

Method: Here’s how I prefer nettles, as taught by a good friend years ago: brew a strong batch of nettle infusion at night with dried nettle leaves (the fresher the better) for about 20 minutes. Pour into a quart sized jar (with leaves included), fill with water to the top, and place in the refrigerator overnight. In the morning, pour into a cup using a strainer with a teaspoon or two of maple syrup for taste — the result is a delicious iced tea/infusion. 

AFTERNOON ⛅

Lastly, when I'm slumping in the afternoon and need to get through something important like a work meeting, I've had really good luck with Asian ginseng (Panax quinquefolius), also known as Chinese or Korean red ginseng. According to Balick (2014), ginseng is an adaptogenic root that contains ginsenosides, stimulating phytochemicals that both improve the body’s response to stress and offer energizing effects for those with struggling with fatigue. It is commonly used to treat both physical and mental exhaustion and, according to Balick, is believed by some herbalists to be particularly beneficial for people who are “overstressed and overworked.” As wild Asian ginseng is currently endangered, I advise using only commercially cultivated roots. 

Method: I personally keep a small stash of ginseng root on my desk, which I chew 1 to 2 nickel-sized pieces of when needed. (The front desk manager at work now knows my little secret and gives me a knowing wink when I duck out of particularly slow meetings to grab ginseng from my mini desk apothecary.😌) Alternatively, Asian ginseng is available in capsule form or can be brewed as a tea, prepared by steeping 1 tsp of dried root for 10+ minutes. It's advised not to exceed 2000 mg in a day.

Next up will be herbs for dreaming!

ON THE HEALING POWER OF DIRT: FOREST BATHING, FRILUFSLIV & GROUNDING

FOREST BATHING, FRILUFSLIV & GROUNDING

Forest therapy, known by many names, is such simple concept that it’s almost silly to give a name at all, and yet there is great power in its sheer simplicity.

Norway has an ancient concept called friluftsliv which translates to "free air life" — describing a lifestyle of exploring and appreciating nature. Its fundamental place in Norwegian culture is associated with another old Norwegian concept, allemannsretten, which is law of the land, quite literally, meaning "freedom to roam." This law allows anyone to explore undeveloped private property as certain rules are abided, “an ancient tradition encoded into Norwegian law with the 1957 Outdoor Recreation Act.”

“Outdoor Journal reports that friluftsliv goes beyond just getting outside for a jog (though that’s great, too). It’s rooted in mindfulness, a feeling of being connected to a larger whole, and a sense of communing with nature.” - Lorenzo for Bustle

Other names that have become popular recently have originated from Alaska and Japan. Alaskan naturalist and filmmaker Steve Kroschel recently popularized the terms “earthing” and “grounding” after his personal discovery of the benefits of connecting directly with the earth, often barefoot in soil and mud, after seeing how it affected him and others in the small town of Haines in Alaska’s rural wilderness, seeming to shorten illness, reduce pain, and contribute to overall healing. Grounding is essentially the practice of putting your bare skin in contact with the earth to reduce pain and improve immune function, like taking a half hour every day to walk barefoot in the grass. This may also sounds too simple to be effective, but it has some incredible implications for health.  

In the 1980s the Japanese Forestry Agency coined a phrase for a similar concept to encourage citizens, many suffering from skyrocketing stress levels in the economic boom, to spend more time in nature. They called it shinrin-yoku, which translates to "forest bathing."

Forest bathing doesn't mean taking a bath in the woods (unless you find a hot spring, I suppose, which is forest bathing on another level), but immersing yourself in the forest and allowing your senses to soak it in. Practicing it means spending time in the forest without an agenda outside of consciously slowing and taking in your surroundings — fresh air, sunlight, sights, smells, sounds — and making contact with the soil, the trees, the plants and yourself. 

From there it’s been called by many other names, from forest therapy to horticultural therapy (which also applies more to gardens, another of favorite places for healing). But a rose is a rose, and forest therapy by any name is magic. And what’s beautiful about these practices, when practiced ethically, is that there’s is an important, reciprocal element to it that is fundamental to its design. As the Association for Nature and Forest Therapy writes, “There is a long tradition of this in cultures throughout the world. It’s not just about healing people; it includes healing for the forest.”

a rose is a rose, and forest therapy by any name is magic

In any case, there's a lot of power in giving something a name, or many names. This is a common tool with anxiety and other mood/mental health complaints, like this shero who named her anxiety Clive. On top of that, giving something a name allows it to become a concepts that can be more easily talked about and appreciated — and that can be studied by researchers and proven as beneficial to human wellness, for folks who appreciate studies which I have to say I kinda do. Science is magic and it helps give credence to a practice that has the power to help many humans non-invasively and affordably.

EVIDENCE OF FOREST THERAPY’S HEALTH BENEFITS

In studies, forest therapy has shown incredible effectiveness for lowering heart rate, lowering stress hormones (cortisol, adrenaline, and noradrenaline), strengthening the immune system, boosting NK (natural killer) cell activity, improving mood, and reducing chronic stress. Some of these beneficial effects have be found to last up to 7 days. And interestingly, some are attributed to natural essential oils emitted by trees, called phytoncides, meaning that breathing in trees is actually healing. Tree huggers, rejoice.

The physiological effects of Shinrin-yoku (taking in the forest atmosphere of forest bathing): evidence from field experiments in 24 forests across Japan (2010): “...results show that forest environments promote lower concentrations of cortisol, lower pulse rate, lower blood pressure, greater parasympathetic nerve activity, and lower sympathetic nerve activity than do city environments. These results will contribute to the development of a research field dedicated to forest medicine, which may be used as a strategy for preventive medicine.”

Psychological effects of forest environments on healthy adults: Shinrin-yoku (forest-air bathing, walking) as a possible method of stress reduction (2007): “...forest environments are advantageous with respect to acute emotions, especially among those experiencing chronic stress. Accordingly, shinrin-yoku may be employed as a stress reduction method, and forest environments can be viewed as therapeutic landscapes. Therefore, customary shinrin-yoku may help to decrease the risk of psychosocial stress-related diseases, and evaluation of the long-term effects of shinrin-yoku is warranted.”

Effect of phytoncide from trees on human natural killer cell function (2009) “We previously reported that the forest environment enhanced human natural killer (NK) cell activity, the number of NK cells, and intracellular anti-cancer proteins in lymphocytes, and that the increased NK activity lasted for more than 7 days after trips to forests both in male and female subjects. To explore the factors in the forest environment that activated human NK cells, in the present study we investigate the effect of essential oils from trees on human immune function...Phytoncide exposure significantly increased NK activity and the percentages of NK, perforin, granulysin, and granzyme A/B-expressing cells, and significantly decreased the percentage of T cells, and the concentrations of adrenaline and noradrenaline in urine. Phytoncides, such as alpha-pinene and beta-pinene, were detected in the hotel room air. These findings indicate that phytoncide exposure and decreased stress hormone levels may partially contribute to increased NK activity."

Articles on forest therapy:
Outside Magazine: Take Two Hours of Pine Forest and Call Me in the Morning
Quartz: The Japanese practice of ‘forest bathing’ is scientifically proven to improve your health

EVIDENCE OF EARTHING'S HEALTH BENEFITS

The effects of grounding (earthing) on inflammation, the immune response, wound healing, and prevention and treatment of chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases (2015): "Accumulating experiences and research on earthing, or grounding, point to the emergence of a simple, natural, and accessible health strategy against chronic inflammation, warranting the serious attention of clinicians and researchers. The living matrix (or ground regulation or tissue tensegrity-matrix system), the very fabric of the body, appears to serve as one of our primary antioxidant defense systems. As this report explains, it is a system requiring occasional recharging by conductive contact with the Earth’s surface – the “battery” for all planetary life – to be optimally effective."

Articles on earthing:
New York Times: Take Two Aspirin, Then Roll in the Mud

FOOD & MOOD

HOW THE GUT BIOME AFFECTS MOOD

The association between mental and digestive disturbances is an old one that can be traced all the way back to the era of Hippocrates. As described in the paper Microbiota and Neurological Disorders: A Gut Feeling, the link between mental and gut imbalance “stands as the single consistently linked comorbidity* described in the medical literature from ancient times to the present.” 

As newborns, our microbes originate from our mother, colonizing the gut in the first days of life and developing into our own unique microbial signature. Once fully developed, the human intestine is a hotbed of nearly 100 trillion bacteria at a given time. This mini ecosystem is constantly adapting and, like all other body systems, striving to maintain balance. ⚖️

Today, researchers like Foster and Neufeld, who published the paper Gut–brain axis: how the microbiome influences anxiety and depression, report that gut microbiota “are an important player in how the body influences the brain, contribute to normal healthy homeostasis, and influence risk of disease, including anxiety and mood disorders.”

THE GUT-BRAIN SUPERHIGHWAY

So, how could food affect mood? To answer this, we have to look at how the gut connects to the brain.

The gut and brain are connected through the vagus nerve, known popularly now as the “gut-brain axis.”

The vagus nerve is not just one nerve, but a whole system of nerves that act as a neural superhighway extending from the brainstem all the way to the lowest base of the abdomen, touching most major organs on its way.

The vagus nerve system also works directly with the enteric nerve system (ENS), which governs the gastrointestinal system, contains about 100 million neurons, and is nicknamed the “second brain.”

Within the ENS and vagus nerve system are some very busy protein molecules called cytokines, constantly providing status updates to the brain about the state of the organs and systems they encounter. 

The emergent theory is that a dysbiosis in the gut’s bacterial flora, even if imperceptible to the individual, is nevertheless communicated up the pathway, sending an alert signal to the brain and directing an inflammatory response — one of the body’s key lines of defense — to the site of imbalance. This “bottom-up” effect is directed by the central nervous system (CNS), which stands poised at all times to signal the immune system to defend us against potential threats.

Foster and Neufeld cite several studies that provide “clear evidence” of this signaling between the gastrointestinal (GI) tract and what essentially is the CNS’s emergency switchboard, via the vagus nerve system. 

THE EMERGENCY ALERT SYSTEM

To visualize, imagine a car accident on a highway. Like the driver calling 911, when dysbiosis occurs in the gut, the gut calls out a stress signal to the CNS. 

Like the police dispatcher radioing to the units on duty, the cytokines — those protein molecules that trigger cell communication and stimulate their movement toward problem sites — stimulate the CNS and the immune system to jump into action, sending cells to the site to cause inflammation as an emergency response.

In cases of food poisoning, these responses can literally save our lives. The issue is that even low-grade cases of bad gut bacteria or an imbalanced gut biome can have the domino effect of sending emergency signals to the brain and CNS. The basic idea is that this distress signal and the resulting inflammation, however minor, could have a noticeable effect on the brain of the individual, especially if the response is prolonged, causing the gut to be consistently inflamed.

In a sense, if the gut is in an ongoing state of imbalance due to poor diet or a bacterial imbalance, it’s always on alert. This means the nervous system is being repeatedly engaged — resulting, potentially, in anxiety. 

In their paper Gut brain axis: Diet microbiota interactions and implications for modulation of anxiety and depression, Luna and Foster report that diet-related changes in gut microbiota have an influence on the gut-brain axis and “may in turn influence behaviours including anxiety and depression.” For example, a recent study in the journal Nature suggests that emulsifiers used in processed food can trigger inflammatory disease by disrupting the barrier between the immune system and the gut biome. Microbiologist Karen Madsen responded to the study's results in Science magazine saying, “It sends a really clear message that changes to our food supply are altering our microbiota and our health.” 

To clarify, the millions of bacteria in the gut, if representing a balanced share of “good bacteria” (like those found in probiotics), are wonderful for stimulating digestion and fighting pathogens. But should they crossing the intestinal barrier into the blood stream, this is where problems arise. To that end, a healthy intestinal lining will have a mucosal layer keeping the intestine safely removed from gut bacteria. But if emulsifiers break down this protective layer, bacteria cells can reach the intestinal lining, causing (by a different pathway, but all the same) inflammation.

THE SOLUTION

As one promising solution, a paper simply titled Mood and gut feelings, Bienenstock and Li report on a study that reveals one specific dietary manipulation positively affecting memory and reducing anxiety-like behaviour: “significant increases in diversity of the microbiome.” 

Essentially, diversifying the gut microbiome with a healthy diet with a good representation of probiotics can bring homeostasis to the GI system, thus reducing inflammation and ending the feedback loop of distress signals to the brain. 

The incredible complexity of the gut microbiome is both what makes it so fascinating, and the reason that only recently have researchers finally had the proper tools to really study it in depth. As far as we’ve come in understanding the human body, this essential habitat of our makeup remains largely mystifying in its design. 

As Foster and Neufeld put it, “the diversity of the microbiome determined to date extends far beyond what researchers expected. We are only beginning to understand how the diversity and distribution of these prominent phyla contribute to health and disease.” 

One thing is clear — the gut's ecosystem is definitely not autonomous. It's a complex, ever-changing, living entity that is significantly wired into the superorganism that is the human body, and it can play a significant role in our mental wellness.

*GLOSSARY

co·mor·bid·i·ty (noun): the simultaneous presence of two chronic diseases or conditions.