Introduction:

Are you like most busy people stressed and inundated with health advice? This overwhelm is not helping your health. You see, one day I woke up in severe pain. I and I could not walk. I was dragging myself around the house in my office chair with wheels. I tried Tylenol, the painting go away. I tried Motrin.

The pain didn’t go away. I then remember that an 80 year old cardiologist had told me about turmeric. I rushed to the store and bought a turmeric supplement. After taking only one capsule, about one hour later, I was able to walk again, pain free. This Mara experience made me a firm believer. In quality holistic remedies, I am Dr. Adeola Oke the body activator. That was me, a nurse, a pharmacist, and a public health professional. I didn’t know that I was suffering from inflammation despite all my years of education. Now I have been able to get to the root cause of my health challenges and I feel great and full of energy. I don’t want you to learn the hard way like I did.

So I created the Wellness Surge Podcast to share simple actionable changes. That you can make to activate your body to heal naturally. Here we will have conversations about food, fitness, mental health, and all that is in between. Now let’s get started.

Hello everybody and welcome to the Wellness Surge podcast.

My name is Dr.Adeola Oke, and I am a body activator. I teach employers and busy people how to implement simple lifestyle changes to heal the body naturally. So that they have the time and the energy to do what they love. Alrighty, so today we are gonna be talking about stress management and how, how stress is impacting your productivity, how stress is impacting your life, how stress is impacting your wellbeing.

So let’s, let me just go back memory lane, right? I have five kids and the last two of those kids are twins, right? And when I give, when I give birth to those twins, I just had the sudden urge, sudden impulse to make a difference in the world. I dunno what was pushing me, but that’s when I started my entrepreneurial journey or change management, wanting to make a change.

Um, so I got, when you get all of this feelings, like, okay, all right, I was breastfeeding this little babies, right? I. And at that time I felt like, oh, I just, I moved to this neighborhood. Um, there are a lot of houses that have been built. It’s a new community. There’s trash everywhere. How about we start a monthly community cleanup?

So guess what? I started that right? Um, and I got that going for, we did that for five years, right? But let me go back to the story, right? So at that point when I just had the SNE newborn babies, um, toddler, I, I studied that, right? In addition, I used to volunteer at my, um, religious center, like volunteer buying pizza for the kids every week, buying juice, all of that.

I was like, there. They used to call me a manager kind of thing for the center, because I just used to, I used to be the one buying all the juices and the things they needed, but guess what All of that was doing to my body, right? The body is not a machine. , the body started to breakdown, right? I used to notice that.

I used to have this brain fog, like, Ugh, I can’t think clearly. Even one day I went to the movie theater with my husband, right? And I just saw this guy with a backpack and I was fixated on this guy’s backpack. The guy was not doing anything weird, in all honesty. He was just being a young guy carrying a backpack.

But I was fixated on that backpack, like, what does he have in the backpack? What’s going on? Blah, blah, blah. And I was looking for like, what’s the nearest exit? Let’s leave this movie theater. I can be here, but thankfully my husband is a healthcare professional, so he was able to calm me down, right? And so we can leave the movie theater, we still got to spend time together and we got to see the movie and do stuff, right?

Um, but he got me thinking like, what is going on in my life? What is going on with me? Why am I having this brain fog? Why is all of this. Not working. I just had babies. I’m not sleeping well. And then I figured out, oh my gosh, all of this is because of stress. Right? So what is stress? Stress is your body’s response to anything that requires attention or action.

Stress is the leading is a leading cost of illness and it costs the United States about 300 billion every single year in lost productivity and medical care costs. Let me say that again. It costs the United States about $300 billion in lost productivity. So that means people not being able to achieve what they really wanna achieve and medical care.

So I’d like you to just take a minute and think about this. Can you remember the last time when you went to bed without a cure in the world and you woke up the next morning feeling energized and excited? When was the last time that happened for you?

Do you feel that stressed is your new normal? If you do, you’re not alone. modern day life, although it’s quite exciting, it keeps you stressed and exhausted, right? If you’re not stressed about all those deadlines at work, you may be stressed out about your finances or even your relationships, say, with your significant other, your ch, your child, your friend, or even just that damn traffic, right?

Like you have to see through this traffic. Oh my gosh, you’re stressing me out. I could be doing other things, right? Um, that could be stressing somebody out. Right? So let’s think about this. What does all of this stress, what does it do to your body? I like to approach you from a head to toe approach. Like, let’s think about it from the head.

but I, before I even get to that, um, stress in general, when it’s just short term, right? It’s not a bad thing, but when it’s long term, it’s when it causes problems. So let me give you an example, right? Um, about a few days ago, somebody reached out to me and said, would you like to be a speaker? We are looking for a speaker, but the event is today

And I’m like, what? Are you kidding me? Um, So I was like, okay, you know what, what’s, it’s not a problem, you know, I was told at 10 o’clock or something and I got myself ready and I went to talk and I give, I, I did the presentation by 5:00 PM so that was stress, right? Adrenaline got me through my presentation, got me through the day.

That was a short term stress, and it actually made me do a, a, a good job, right. So stress when it’s short-term, is actually good. It makes you achieve goals. But when that stress keeps going on and on and on, that is when it’s a problem. So let’s talk about it, right? The head, right? What does this long-term stress do to the body?

It keeps you worried all the time, makes you feel nervous. It’s like your body just can’t switch off. Like it’s just going, ugh. And you need something to help you press the off button, right? Um, it makes it difficult to concentrate eventually long term. It start, it can start leading to panic attacks. So remember my story, right?

Being fixated on the poor guy. Yeah. He didn’t do anything to me, . He wasn’t really suspicious to anybody else, but I was going through something, right? So long-term stress can cause anxiety, depression, um, migraines, tension headaches, trouble sleeping, and this one is near and dear to my heart. Like college kids, right?

I feel that they are going through a lot of stress. They just have trouble shutting off, right? Because of stress. They want to be involved in everything and everyth and anything, and it’s causing stress on their body. And can you then imagine what it’s gonna do to them in the long term or even right now, right?

A lot of people are complaining about mental health issues, right? Let’s check our stress. What is it doing to the body? Okay, so now let’s think about the heart. What is long-term stress doing to the heart? It can cause high blood pressure. So remember the medical care costs I talked about? Well, yeah, long-term stress, high blood pressure, right?

It can increase the risk of a heart attack, right? It can increase, it can cause heart problems and many more things to the heart, right? , you hear about some CEOs that just dropped dead while walking out or something like that. So this is long term stress. Um, stress can also reduce the ability of your body to fight an infection and also to recover from illnesses quickly when you do have an infection.

Right? So what does stress, long-term stress do to the skin? Well, I love my skin and I love beautiful skin. I don’t know about you, but skin when it comes to stress, right? Stress can cause the skin to be more sensitive and oily, right? And long-term, if nothing has done about that stress, it can start leading to skin and hair problems such as acne and hair loss and more, right?

So, . Let’s wonder, what’s that stress doing to your skin? Do you want beautiful, glowing skin? Check your stress. All right, so long-term stress can also cause stomach cramps and gut problems, right? For some people, long-term stress can cause like weight gain. Um, some, especially in the abdominal area, you may be like, oh, I’m doing everything, but I’m just not losing that weight.

Check your stress. In some people long-term stress can cause type two diabetes. And that’s why I like to kind of focus on, um, see how we can heal naturally by walking, um, seeing how we can heal naturally and manage type two diabetes or even possibly see how, if we can reverse it, right. Um, that’s why I also work with people on, on, on that.

Also, long-term stress can cause fertility problems for both men and. , I like you to sit with that for a minute. Right. Um, there’s a lot of, a lot of people are going through fertility issues. I like us to kind of sit back and think, what is my stress level and how can I manage it? Right? So I’d like you to think about this.

In the past week, did you have a misunderstanding with anyone? If you did, how did he make you? , I know how I feel . See if I have a misunderstanding with my husband, right? Um, it’s like I have this load on my head. It’s like I have, it just feels so heavy and I don’t feel better until we resolve that misunderstanding.

Right? So what is your own stress? What are your misunderstandings with people? What are they doing to you? What is it doing to your body? What is it doing to your. , right? So that’s is a form of stress on its own relationship, stress, right? Just interacting with people. And I want you to know that you are not alone.

Everybody’s going through this. Everyone goes through stress. It’s the way that you respond to the stress that makes a big difference to your overall wellbeing. It’s how you react to the stress that makes you or breaks you. All right? So I’m gonna share about three tips on how we can manage the stress, right?

One is to become more aware. Become aware what is causing the stress in your body? What is causing you to feel this way? Is it the traffic? Is it the, is it this person that you keep interacting with every day that just, ugh, stresses you out? Is it work? Is it your finances? Once you figure out what it is, then you can deal with it, right?

You can get, try to figure. Get to the root cause of the problem and then attack it from there, right? So I’d like you to kind of, let’s see how we can flip the script, right? Don’t think of stress as a threat. Think about it as a challenge. So remember, um, I was told that I, I should come and deliver a presentation at 10 o’clock, and the stress adrenaline caught me through that day because I woke up feeling like, oh, I’m tired.

I don’t wanna do anything . But that. That short term stress got me through delivering. I’ll see an awesome presentation. Yeah. That I felt like people benefited from. Right. So think about it as a challenge, right? Um, don’t think about it as being overwhelming. Think about it as an opportunity for you to make a difference.Right? Don’t think about it as being pressure. Try to think about, yeah, I got this. I can manage this. Right? Right. Don’t focus on problems. That are associated with stress, rather focus on the possibilities. So like I said, I just thought about it as, okay, this is a possibility for me to make an impact in some people’s lives.

And so, yeah, normally I would’ve said, no, you only gave me less than a day . But I was like, okay, I’ll do this. I got this right. Um, so don’t fight stress, embrace it and manage. Its, that’s how you flip the script on stress. All right, and you start becoming a pro . All right. I know that is mindfulness, right?

The Mayo Clinic defines mindfulness as a type of meditation that involves being intensely aware of what you are sensing and feeling at every moment without interpretation or judgment. . All right, so that’s a little hard sometimes, right? Like when we are just sitting and just being by ourselves, we have so much going on and we are constantly interpreting them and judging them, but we practice, this can be achievable.

So examples of mindfulness will be like just being aware of what’s going on in your surrounding. So experiencing your environment with all of your five senses. Your touch, the sound, the sight, the smell, and the taste. So let’s think about, say you were going to get, were getting, you gonna have lunch, right?

A bowl of spaghetti. Right? Think about it like, so the food, um, the smell of the food. The sight of the food, uh, looks good. Mm-hmm. smells so good. You torch it right? You put the food in your mouth, you hear every true. You listen to the sound of every true in your mouth. You taste it, you savo it. You kind of savo and taste all the spices and ingredients that we are used to make this food delicious.

That just slowing down of your body, like we constantly rush, rush, rush, high, high, high intensity. Just, just doing all of that just kind of slows your body down and it kinds of, it just relaxes you and that’s one way to manage stress. Another tip is this has just been accepting who you are. That’s another way of being mindful, right?

Accepting who you are. Be kind to yourself, right? Be kind to. , be kind to you and treat yourself the way you treat somebody. Very important. That’s one way to be mindful. . All right, so, so that’s mindfulness, right? We talked about being aware, right, of what’s causing the stress. We talked about mindfulness, and the third is deep breathing, right?

I like this deep breathing technique. It’s a, um, deep breathing is a technique that you can use when anything upsetting happens to you before you react, right? So say somebody gets in your face that’s upsetting you say in all sorts of words before you respond to. practice deep breathing, it will make a diff big difference.

So deep breath breathing can be used when you’re stressed. Or even for some people that have have trouble sleeping. Right. I like this deep breathing technique. It’s the 4 7 8 breathing technique. Um, and he was, he was, excuse me, it’s usually, um, it was Dr. Andrew Wild that came up with this one. There’s so many out there, but I especially like this one.

Um, the 4, 7, 8 breathing is a natural tranquilizer. Tranquilizer for the body, right? Alright, so how do you do it if you’ve never done it? Or you’re not used to Deb breathing, getting all that good oxygen into your body, that’s okay. In the beginning, you may feel a little giddy, but we practice, you will get better.

So you wanna sit down while doing this? If this is new to you, or better still, better yet, lie down, put your hand on your belly, right? And when you’re breathing during deep breathing, you feel up, feel in like you’re filling a balloon.

and then you breathe out with your mouth. You put your tongue to. The tip of your tongue to the roof of your mouth and you breathe out through purse lips. So breathing out all that stress, right? Um, you breath in through the nose and out through the mouth, through purse lips, and you wanna do this for breaths at a time.

You don’t wanna do more than that because it’s just really calms the buddy down, right? And he just kind of resets this and it’s like a natural tranquilizer for the. . All right, so that’s, those are my tips. So you can do that about twice a day, right? So I’d like you to go with this. These are my pattern words.

Remember the, remember that these are stressful times, right? So please be kind to yourself. And be kind to others. My name’s Dr. Adi. I am a body activator. I teach employers and busy people how to implement simple lifestyle changes to heal the body naturally so that they have the time and the energy to do what they love.

Outro:

Guess what? I have a free gift for you. Go to wellness search.com and take the quiz there to find out if you possibly have high blood sugar, or you can schedule a free call with me where I can share one thing that you can take action on to start feeling your best.

If you’ve enjoyed the show, then follow us and subscribe on Apple Podcast or Spotify. Information presented here is for educational purposes only, and it is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease. Please do not apply any of the information presented here without first speaking with your primary care provider.

With best wishes to see you thrive. Have an awesome week.