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 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, and my mind, my brain's 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 guidedhealthjourney.com.