Welcome back to another episode of health hacks.

As I round out this series on stress by sharing with you that

stress can also cause skin problems such as acne, eczema,

psoriasis and leading to flare ups. And many of these

conditions are actually impacted by the health of our gut. The

health of our gut is houses 70% of our immune system. And as

Hippocrates said 1000s of years ago, all disease starts in our

gut. And I like to say all health starts in our gut. When

our gut isn't happy, it can cause flare ups of a variety of

skin conditions, and when we are stressed out, we're actually

unknowingly killing off good bacteria in our gut and causing

an imbalance in our gut, which can then trigger these skin

problems. And so what can you do about it? Well, one thing that

I've had to learn myself probably about now, seven, eight

years ago, which has created a powerful shift in my ability to

be handling the stress in my life is simply learning to say

no. You see, when we say no to others, we're saying yes to

ourselves, and when we say yes to other people, we are saying

no to ourselves. We only each have 24 hours in a day, and we

lead busy lives, and are we allocating time to ourselves so

that we can get out of our stress state, do something that

brings us joy, that we love, that allows us to calm our

nervous system? And if we're not allocating time to that each and

every day, then other people are quite likely taking our time,

and we are in the habit of saying yes, and when I learned

to say no, that was really powerful. And in saying no, that

created time in my calendar for me, and I block that time in my

calendar I don't see clients before 10am because I block my

morning time for me to be able to get out of the house, go and

do something that I love, so that I've filled my cup, so that

I am then able to serve for the rest of the day. And so just

start practicing saying no, if someone asks you to do something

as a favor and it's going to take your time just practice

saying no. It's hard at first. It was hard for me, and it felt

strange in my mind. My brain is like, what are you doing? You

could do this with your eyes closed and your hands tied

behind your back, and I was talking back to my brain going,

Yes, I know I could. I'm practicing saying no so that I

can use that time for something that I want to do, and no is a

complete sentence. When you say no to somebody, you don't have

to justify why you're saying no. You can simply say thank you for

asking, however, no, I'm not available to do that, or simply

No, so thank you for tuning in to this series on stress. It

started with episode number 445 and finishes now with episode

456 if you've caught a few of them and you haven't caught all

of them, go back and tune into all of those episodes. Each

episode gives you a tip in how you can help to manage your

stress, reduce the stress in your life so that you can be

healthier, you can extend your longevity. Because the reality

is is that stress is stealing your health and it is shortening

your life. So these are some quick episodes so you can shift

that for yourself. And it's never too late to start. And if

you need support, or you'd like to run some lab tests so we can

see how the stress has impacted your mineral levels, your

vitamin levels, your hormones, etc. Please reach out Melissa at

your guided health journey.com.