The Secret Enemy That's Making You SICK and FAT

Hello Health Champions today I'm going to talk  about cortisol stress and weight gain but also  

about why weight gain might be the least of your  problems a lot of people are aware of and talk  

about stress but when they do that they usually  talk about a feeling that they have something  

like that they're feeling busy they're feeling  overwhelmed they're feeling powerless they have  

so much to do they don't know how to get it all  done and while all of that is indeed stress we  

need to understand that it's not primarily about  the feeling that we have and most of the stress  

you can't feel what stress really is is a stress  response it is how your nervous system responds  

to something in your environment and the reason  we can't feel it most of the time is that it's a  

conditioned response to all the different things  the events that we encounter during any day and  

these could be external something that we run  into something that someone else does but most  

of the time it is more of the internal stress  it's our internal dialogue it's our internal  

way of responding and thinking and acting and  another reason that we may not be aware of all  

this stress is that it actually starts in utero  this conditioning starts even before we're born  

a lot of people are concerned with weight gain  and there is a strong connection between stress  

and cortisol because cortisol is a stress hormone  and the purpose of cortisol is to increase blood  

sugar whenever we're stressed when we're in a  fight flight response your body is looking for  

emergency Fuel and there is always a balance  of fuel between fat and glucose but when we're  

stressed we're shifting that toward glucose  so now that cortisol stimulates what's called  

gluconeogenesis even if we don't have anything  to eat then the body starts making more glucose  

and there's two primary sources for that one  is that we start breaking down glycogen that  

the body has stored for a reserve purpose to  make extra glucose and the other is that if  

we don't have enough glycogen like if we are  doing a long-term fast and we are done with  

with used up the glycogen but then we're stressed  at the same time that we're having some emotional  

or physical stress now we might actually start  breaking down protein as a backup source and we  

could be breaking down muscle if this is chronic  so a lot of people with chronic stress and chronic  

cortisol problems you'll find that they have that  big belly the skinny legs and the flat butt and  

part of that is that the cortisol is breaking  down the muscle to try to make more glucose  

but the primary reason for cortisol is to raise  blood sugar and in doing that it also stimulates  

more insulin we can do studies where we inject  people with cortisol or a popular medication is  

corticosteroids and what happens now is people's  blood glucose goes up and they become insulin  

resistant another thing that cortisol does is it  increases Cravings because yes it it can make some  

glucose through gluconeogenesis but of course the  even faster way is if you can eat something and if  

you get cravings and there is a vending machine on  the corner now that's an even faster way to bring  

up that glucose even if there's no glycogen around  but here's a slide that you really really need to  

understand about what the stress response really  is so we often talk about the stress response as  

the fight flight response and that is correct  so we have the fight flight and we have the  

feed breed and that is sometimes referred to as  the four F's that's an easy way to remember it  

fighting fleeing feeding and procreation and when  we have a fight flight response one of the first  

things that happen is you get a pupil dilations  your eyes are trying to let in more light because  

if you're being chased if there's an emergency if  there's a Christ is and you need to evaluate the  

environment quickly then you need to take in a lot  of light a lot of information now you're not going  

to see it as clearly you're not going to have that  precise focus and Clarity but you don't need that  

you just need to see large shapes and objects the  next thing that happens is that your heart rate  

goes up because if you're in a fight then you need  to be able to run and make a lot of energy so the  

heart rate increases to pump more blood another  thing that happens is the stress hormones create  

a vasoconstriction it's primarily the adrenaline  also called epinephrine that constricts blood  

vessels and now the heart is pumping harder  against tighter blood vessels so now the blood  

pressure goes up and that's a good thing in fight  flight because it makes the blood move much faster  

and then like we talked about the blood sugar also  goes up so first we have the adrenaline second we  

have the cortisol that comes in very very shortly  thereafter because if you're in a fight flight  

you're not just going to want immediate energy you  want some fuel to sustain that fight and also in a  

fight flight situation you're much more likely to  get injured and if you get injured now you might  

start bleeding and then the body wants to be able  to stop that bleeding quickly so it anticipates  

and prepares just in case and it increases the  blood clotting and part of that blood clotting  

Cascade is cholesterol so you're going to down  regulate the re-uptake of LDL cholesterol so  

The receptors get down regulated and this is  one more factor that contributes to high LDL  

cholesterol and then there's the other side of  the equation and we need to understand that this  

is about resource allocation that there's only so  many resources in the body so when we send more  

resource is one way then we have less resources  left over for something else so in a fight flight  

situation we're going to increase these and  therefore we're going to have less of the feed  

breed so digestion is handled by feed breeds so  now we have less of a digestive function we have  

less immune function we have less reproductive  function and all of this makes perfect sense  

because when you're being chased by a bear you're  not so concerned if you're digesting that little  

last piece of lettuce you're not so worried  about a microbe inside of you because there's  

this big bear chasing you and also reproduction  obviously this is not the time to reproduce and  

the feed breed also handles healing and DNA repair  so we're going to have less healing and DNA repair  

as well but here's the point I want to drive home  really really strongly and I want you to really  

pay attention and get this so you can explain  it and you can understand all of those different  

factors that this is like a seesaw we have the  sympathetic on one side and the parasympathetic  

on the other and any time that one goes up or down  the other one goes the other way it's the way it  

has to be we are hardwired in the brain and the  brain stem this is the only way that it can happen  

and why is this because the sympathetic the fight  flight is concerned with survival in this moment  

and the feed breed is concerned with optimal  function long term but if we don't survive this  

moment then there is no long term and that's why  the sympathetic has to kick in in a split second  

and why it takes over and kind of flattens all the  other responses because nothing else is important  

if there is an emergency another way of thinking  about this is like a gas pedal that you can't  

speed up and slow down the car at the same time  you're going to have to choose and in terms of  

how important this is how it affects this resource  allocation another way of thinking about this is  

like a faucet that if you have a faucet that One  automatically turns on when the other turns off  

and vice versa then anytime that you turn on your  fight flight you're going to turn off the feed  

breed and I know I'm saying this many times but  it's that important if you understand that this  

is about resources and anytime that you have a  stress response then you're going to turn off  

the parasympathetic and if these stress responses  are conditioned from before birth and we're not  

aware of them and we all have some sympathetic  dominance some stress dominance then to the  

degree that we have more of the fight flight we're  going to chronically have less of the feed breed  

and we need to have a balance of these one  is not bad and the other is good but when we  

get into chronic dominance now we are chronically  deficient in digestion immune system reproduction  

healing and DNA repair and for some people this  imbalance can tend to get really really stuck  

and manifest certain ways and now these people get  diagnosed with fancy words like dysautonomia which  

simply means that the autonomic nervous system  has two branches the fight flight and the feed  

breed and the autonomic nervous system balances  these two and when the autonomic nervous system  

doesn't do a good job then we have dysautonomia  meaning the regulation is off another example  

would be Raynaud's syndrome which is where people  have extremely cold hands and feet to the point  

where their finger and their nails turn white and  blue But realize that that is nothing more than  

an extreme version of sympathetic dominance they  just have chronic vasoconstriction so now that  

vasoconstriction is so tight it doesn't allow the  blood flow to get out of the extremities but let's  

try to get an understanding of how common this  is so again a sympathetic dominance that's just  

a branch that drives the fight flight response  and we all tend to have a little bit of chronic  

increase there just because of the world we live  in and our lifestyles this is responsible for the  

vast majority of our chronic degenerative disease  so let me give you some examples when we have  

heart arrhythmias that can definitely be caused by  sympathetic dominance what do we get we get beta  

blockers incredibly common medication when we have  high blood pressure hypertension now we get blood  

pressure medication we get more beta blockers  we get diuretics Etc when we have hyperglycemia  

high blood sugar when that's chronic that is  pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes now we get  

medication like metformin and insulin and when we  have a tendency for blood clotting then of course  

we get blood thinners and if you realize that this  is associated with the cardiovascular disease with  

the metabolic syndrome you see how common this  is that most medication prescribed are in these  

categories and there is a component not the only  reason but there's a strong component of stress in  

that mechanism another example of what can happen  is insomnia millions and millions of people have  

trouble sleeping and part of that can be racing  thoughts because when we're stressed we tend to  

be unable to turn off that racing thoughts but  also whenever we have increased cortisol then  

that cortisol actually turns off the melatonin  and the Melatonin is the hormone that regulates  

your circadian rhythm your sleep wake cycle but  anytime we have higher cortisol that's going to  

turn off that melatonin that's what it's supposed  to do that's how we can wake up in the morning and  

that's appropriate but if it happens all the  time and we can't get into a good rhythm of  

sleeping then obviously that's not good when we  have a decreased immune function now we're more  

susceptible to colds and flows there are certain  people who get colds and flus all the time and  

again stress is not the only Factor but it is a  huge factor and then let's look at what happens  

on the other side we have sympathetic dominance  if we have too much fight flight we're going to  

have not enough feed breed or parasympathetic  so digestion is 100 percent regulated and  

controlled and the resources are provided when  the parasympathetic nervous system is working so  

when this is decreased now we have less digestive  function and things like gerd gastroesophageal  

reflux disease there's two reasons for this one  is that we're not producing enough stomach acid  

and the second is that the parasympathetic also  controls that little sphincter valve at the top  

of the stomach between the esophagus and and  the stomach and if we can't tighten that up  

because we have reduced parasympathetic now that  acid can backflow we can also get things like  

ulcers because we don't have the proper pH so  there's a bacterium called helicobacter pylori  

that thrives when we don't make enough stomach  acid constipation the peristalsis the movement of  

food through the digestive tract is also produced  by the parasympathetic irritable bowel syndrome is  

when we have alternating constipation and diarrhea  when the stomach frequently gets upset and again  

this is typically when we have an inconsistent  parasympathetic function and also bloating and  

sibo can be caused by this because we don't get  the proper bacterial Flora when we're stressed  

and also there's another sphincter muscle another  valve called the ileocecal valve that's all also  

regulated by the parasympathetic and if we don't  have that close up properly now we can get back  

flow of bacteria from the colon to the small  intestine and get the small intestine bacterial  

overgrowth we can also get malabsorption that  we're not absorbing the nutrients properly we  

think we're eating the right food but we're not  really absorbing it we're not really digesting it  

because we're not healing the microvilli on the  intestinal membrane and we're not making enough  

stomach acid we're not making enough digestive  enzymes to break down the food and it's kind  

of interesting when it comes to dietary advice  because 99 of the focus is on what you eat but  

maybe we should put more of the emphasis even  on how you feel when you eat than the quality  

of food because there's some people who try  so hard to eat the perfect food and yet they  

have all sorts of different problems and maybe  it is because they're stressed because they're  

parasympathetic nervous system isn't working well  enough to digest this perfect food whereas some  

people seem to do really well no matter what they  put in their body so maybe they can break down the  

food and utilize it whereas if you're stressed it  doesn't really matter what you eat and by that of  

course I don't mean that you should eat garbage  but even the high quality food may not be enough  

if can't digest it properly because you don't  have enough parasympathetic function and like  

we said it affects your immunity you might get  more frequent colds and flus and it can be more  

far-reaching with the microflora your microbiome  because a lot of your immune system a lot of your  

immune function comes from there and if you  don't have a good parasympathetic if you're  

stressed you're not going to get the variety of  that flora and you also may be losing some of  

your cancer defense because the parasympathetic is  responsible for producing your cell-based immunity  

and if you can't make those killer T cells that  you may have a reduced ability to identify and  

wipe out some early stages of cancer also these  days have you noticed in the last several decades  

how infertility has become a big deal it's  incredibly common there's an infertility  

clinic on every corner and people spend  thousands tens of thousands of dollars on this  

and it could be contributing to irregular periods  it could be contributing to the inability to carry  

a child to term called a miscarriage it could also  contribute to low sperm count low quality and of  

course we probably all have heard how stress can  contribute to erectile dysfunction and we could  

also get reduced amounts of healing reduced  capacity to heal so that could be poor wound  

healing but it could also be that your organs  don't repair the way they're supposed to so  

if you have a kidney infection or some liver  problems then that tissue doesn't regenerate  

as quickly and if your gut isn't healing then you  might end up with a leaky gut you could have food  

particles get out in the bloodstream cause food  sensitivities contribute to autoimmunity and so  

on and stress can also cause reduced ability of  DNA repair so normally the DNA can repair itself  

whenever we have an error in replication little  mistakes can be repaired but if that doesn't work  

now we have problems like premature aging or even  more predisposed to cancer because some of these  

mistakes if they're not caught they could escalate  and turn into cancer but the body normally has a  

way of finding and dealing with a lot of this  stuff so how do we handle this well there's two  

factors involved in managing stress and really  dealing with the root cause because most of the  

time when people talk about managing stress  they're talking about reducing their workload  

about looking away from The Real World just try to  cut it out but realize it's not about the outside  

world yes it contributes but it is about how you  are conditioned how you habitually respond to it  

that's the stress response and it's not about how  you feel most of the time so there are two factors  

involved with this one is to have a strong  frontal lobe the strong frontal portion of  

the brain and the second is to work on your wiring  and the frontal lobe is super important important  

because a strong frontal lobe is what turns  off that stress response like we said when you  

have an emergency it will save your life if you  can react to things but then when the danger is  

over something needs to turn that response off so  that we can relax and get back to balance and the  

thing that turned that off is the frontal lobe so  the better the frontal lobe works the more firing  

power we have in the front lobe the better we can  manage those responses and the second thing is  

about how we're wired how we're conditioned so I  want to introduce the concept of brain frequencies  

and they start with the Delta which is very nice  and slow that's from 0.5 to 4 Hertz which means  

the brain cell on average is firing 0.5 to 4  times per second and these frequencies are very  

important because we can get stuck in different  frequencies based on our wiring and conditioning  

and they represent different activities and  different emotional states so Delta is when we're  

sleeping Theta is between four to eight Hertz and  that is when we're half awake basically it's when  

you're almost falling asleep or almost waking up  but you're not quite awake or quite sleep Alpha is  

when you are fully awake but very relaxed you're  not doing very much it's a great learning state if  

you can be alert and very relaxed that's when you  learn the best and interestingly when you meditate  

then you typically try to get down to the border  between Theta and Alpha right around 8 Hertz and  

even more interestingly that is also the frequency  of the Earth's electromagnetic field so it's a  

frequency that we're conditioned to and then we  have something called beta there is low beta mid  

and high beta so low beta is from 12 to 15 Hertz  also sometimes called sensory motor Rhythm and now  

we are fully awake we are still relaxed but we're  a little more engaged it's like a confident you're  

you're engaging in something but you're not sort  of stressed about it the next step is mid beta 15  

to 20 and this is where we function the best when  we're active so now when I'm standing here and  

explaining something I am hopefully in mid beta we  are awake we're getting things done we're focused  

but we're not really stressed about it and then  we get into the high beta between 20 and 28 and  

the higher we get into beta now we start shifting  into the the bad type of stress more into anxiety  

yes we might get some things done but it's really  wearing on us and we much better if we could get  

down into the mid and the low beta and then  the highest brain frequency is gamma that's  

between 30 and 100 and there's a lot of discussion  about this because on the one hand it seems like  

this could also be states of anxiety but in some  cases where people meditate like monks who spend  

a lifetime meditating they have off the chart  amounts of gamma so it can also represent Peak  

States Of Consciousness and even Enlightenment  so all of these different frequencies are always  

present they're all good but what's important  is that the brain has the ability to switch from  

one to the other so when we're supposed to sleep  we're supposed to have Delta when we're supposed  

to be awake and relaxed that's supposed to be  Alpha and so on the problem happens when we get  

stuck when we do so much of something when we're  in a particular state so much that we don't know  

how to get out of it the brain basically just  gets into the habit of doing that and when that  

happens in the high beta this is where we have  chronic stress and sometimes then what happens  

is because we spend so much time there we burn it  out essentially and then it starts flatlining and  

now we're like walking zombies that even though  our eyes are open we're basically just in Delta  

and Theta because we can't switch these things and  one of the best ways to deal with this and help  

the brain get more flexible is called meditation  and I talk a lot about meditation and I think it's  

fantastic and I think you should all do it but  here's the problem that the people who need it  

the most they aren't really good at it and it's  very difficult for people to learn and the ones  

who need it the most they have the least amount  of patience and focus and attention spans so  

it's like they try it and they can't even get five  seconds of Silence so it's a very long and tedious  

process so most people they try it and then they  quit and even if you have the determination to  

stick with it it could take years to gain the kind  of proficiency that really makes a difference but  

there's also something called brain tap and this  is not a 100 substitute but it's a fantastic tool  

to accomplish a lot of the same things and let me  say by the way this is not a paid promotion the  

brain tab company is not paying me to do this but  I'm using it myself now more regularly and I've  

learned a lot just in the last year that I'm super  excited about it and I think for a lot of people  

who have made changes they've changed their diet  they try to exercise but they still are not really  

feeling any better they they might have lost the  weight or they may not even have a way to lose  

but they're just not feeling great then I think  that the stress the emotional aspect of Health  

could be the thing that is not getting addressed  and I think this could make a huge difference so  

very simply put brain tap Works through something  called brain entrainment and one of the principles  

is called a frequency following response so if  somebody touches you one time then there is one  

signal there is one impulse that is traveling to  the brain so one stimulation creates one brain  

response now you can do that with touch you can  do it with sound you can do it with light and this  

headset uses light and sound in various  frequencies so if you play a light if you  

blink a light and you play a sound at certain  frequencies then you have the stimulation and  

the response if you stimulate something one time  per second you get one response per second if you  

stimulate something 10 times per second you get  a response 10 times per second that's called a  

frequency following response so now they can jog  the brain they can kind of induce very very gently  

and safely induce different frequencies and help  the brain break out of those stuck States and the  

session is anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes and  through that session it takes you through these  

different frequencies so it's kind of jogs your  brain it speeds it up it slows it down and in  

doing that it helps the brain get more flexible  and here's the biggest difference to meditation  

is meditation if you're not super focused it  doesn't really do much for you with this one  

even if you fall asleep it still works the same  and this probably makes really good sense to you  

but it didn't really hit home with me until I  had a way to measure it so these are different  

scans you measure heart rate variability and  then through very complicated calculations  

that I don't understand they come up with all  these different markers and here is about the  

Harmony and the Symmetry in brain communication  the balance between the left and the right and  

how the different parts of the brain are talking  to each other the coherence if you will so this  

is actually done on the same day this is Thursday  February 9th but one of them is a 10 40 and one is  

39 minutes later so they just had time to run  the scan put on the headset and then redo the  

scan and you can see how they had an index number  that went from 38 and we would like to be at least  

between 50 and 100 and after a single session it  went to 62 but you can also see how this symmetry  

here it's just all over the place and then after  a single session it became very very harmonic very  

symmetrical but like anything else we can make  some quick changes sometimes but it's like a  

skill that this has to be entrained it's something  that we need to do over and over pretty much on  

a daily basis for this to stick but then once we  have really trained the brain then we can maintain  

it with less and here's another indicator that  they call the emotional state and it went from 28  

to 60 and basically you can see on the scale here  dark and red is bad and blue and green is good but  

this one really blew me away because it also makes  an assessment of how well your brain is performing  

relative to your age so at the time of the test  this person was 52 years old but their brain was  

behaving like a 53 year old on average and then  after a single session the 52 year old person  

and their brain was now behaving as someone 10  years younger and we know today that stress is  

a component of virtually every health condition  so I think this is a great way to address that  

emotional aspect and if you'd like to get your  hands on one I'm going to give you some links But  

realize that we're doing a giveaway we're going to  give away three of these headsets and we have the  

giveaway started April 21st and it's going to go  through May 1st so when this video drops you still  

have four days to participate in this giveaway  and here's the cool part there's three grand prize  

winners the headset retails for 6.47 and then  there is some software with hundreds of different  

sessions that you can run that is 180 dollars for  a year so that's 827 dollars and we're giving away  

three of those so in total we giving away over  twenty four hundred dollars but here's the best  

part the more you refer the greater your chance of  winning so you can basically earn one of these the  

first winner is going to be pulled at random but  the other two the number two is going to be the  

person who refers the most people into the drawing  and the third winner is going to be the person who  

referred the number one winner now if this number  one winner wasn't referred if they just entered  

for themselves then that third price goes to the  person who referred the second most people to the  

drawing so get right to it and tell everyone you  know about this so that they can win and so that  

you can earn your prize now if you don't win we're  also going to have some of the deepest discounts  

ever on this set because it's going to be a sale  and we'll give you all that information down below  

you can just follow the links if you enjoyed this  video You're Gonna Love that one and if you truly  

want to master Health by understanding how the  body really works make sure you subscribe hit  

that Bell and turn on all the notifications  so you never miss a life-saving video