Welcome back to another episode of health hacks

as I continue talking about stress and how it impacts

various aspects of your life, health and ability to function

at optimal levels. And today, I want to talk about how it

impairs your memory and your concentration, your cognitive

function. Overall, chronic stress can affect your brain

function, and you intuitively already know this, because when

you're stressed out, you're feeling like there's that ping,

ping, ping, ping, going on in your brain, and you can't

actually land on one thing. And as a result, you struggle to

remember things. You struggle to focus. You struggle in your

decision making abilities, and in that moment, recognize that,

ah, it's stress that's causing this. What can I do in order to

calm my nervous system? And so, as with all of these episodes

I've been doing, I love to give you some tips of different

things that you can implement in your life to help calm your

nervous system. And some of them you're going to hear me saying,

you're going to be like, yep, not doing that. It's not for me,

and that's okay. Keep tuning in, because every session, I am

giving you another tip, and in at least one of them out of the

12 that I'm running this month, you will find something that you

enjoy, that helps you calm your nervous system each and every

day, so that you don't get into this place of chronic stress

where you can't focus, can't make decisions, and can't sleep,

etc, etc. So my tip for today is to find a hobby that you love.

What is it that brings you joy that you can lose time in when

you do it? Is it something such as reading, taking some time to

read every day, lose yourself in the story in a book. Is it

gardening, losing yourself in nature outside and feeling the

soil in your on your hands and fingers, which is actually

great, because then you're getting some of the microbes in

the soil into your body that support your gut health as well.

Is it painting? Is it some other kind of craft that you enjoy

doing that allows you to just relax into that activity and

push everything else that's going on in your world outside

of it, while you take that time to lose yourself in pure joy.

And sometimes we feel like I don't have a right to do that.

I'm too busy. I have all of these things that I need to get

done. I don't have time. And the reality is is that in that

stressed out state where you can't focus, where you can't

make decisions, where you're struggling to remember things,

you are not productive anyway, so everything is taking longer,

and that's frustrating, and that adds to your stress. If you

instead take half an hour out of your day to calm your mind, you

can come back to whatever else it is that you're trying to get

done from a place of being able to focus, being able to remember

things, being able to make decisions, and therefore you are

much more productive. I know it sounds counterintuitive,

however, it truly works. So what have you got to lose? Give it a

try and see if that helps you get out of chronic stress and

into a place of being more productive. And as you do that,

and you get yourself out of chronic stress, you're also

supporting all of your other factors in your health that I've

been talking about thus far in terms of stress will not be

negatively impacting them anymore, because you're getting

yourself out of that Chronic stress state. If stress is

something that you struggle with and you feel like you need some

more support with in the interim, as you make some of

these lifestyle changes, please reach out to me, Melissa, at

your guided health journey.com. Because there are some natural

supplements that can help your body calm. There's also some lab

testing that we can do to see what your cortisol levels are,

what time of day they're out of balance, so that we can really

tune in and create a customized plan for you to help you get out

of your chronic stress state and into a healthy state of moving

between your parasympathetic and your sympathetic nervous systems

as you should, As opposed to being stuck in your chronic

stress, sympathetic nervous system all day long.