The Curated Approach: Digestion and Energy, Mood, + Stress
You may have noticed a pattern in our Curations, recommendations, and messages—we often suggest you approach your health priorities by first determining if your primary concerns are related to Digestion or Energy, Mood + Stress. Why? Through our training and experience, we’ve learned that those are the primary cornerstones of holistic health. Let me explain.
Why Digestion?
Digestion involves so much more than eating, absorbing, and eliminating. While those are the basic steps, digestion plays a role in nearly every system and process in your body! Did you know that the digestive system houses somewhere around 70 to 80% of your immune system? Or that the microbes in your digestive system assist in making neurotransmitters that make your brain work better? And if you are in a chronically stressed state, your digestive system cannot function well. The body will always slow or shut down digestion when it feels stressed or in danger. Many people live in a chronically stressed state all the time, leading to many issues that impact our physical, emotional and mental health.
The breakdown and absorption of nutrients through the digestive tract is critical for healthy bones, skin, brain, mood, gut, immune health, hormonal balance, managing inflammation, and more. When the digestive system is not working optimally, we start to experience symptoms. Sometimes those are obvious like gas, bloating, constipation, or reflux. Other times they are less obvious, like acne, food reactions, foggy head, or inflammation1. Our approach is always to look at how the food we eat and how well we are digesting and absorbing is contributing to either our overall health or the health challenges we are facing. We don’t chase symptoms. We use symptoms as messages we translate into meaningful next steps to help you learn how to support your digestive system with lifestyle, food, and sometimes supplements to improve your digestive function and, therefore your overall health!
Why Energy, Mood + Stress?
Energy, Mood + Stress is how we describe the impact of our stress responses, blood sugar handling (how efficiently the body turns food into energy), and overall energy levels. These systems also impact our digestion, as mentioned above—one does not operate without the other! How our body responds to stressors is a physical process before it’s an emotional one. Those physiological responses set us up for either consistent moods and energy, rational responses, and solid sleep. Or they set us up for a roller coaster ride of unpredictable moods, energy, and sleep. What we eat and how we eat it plays a bigger role than most people realize in balancing this cycle. Our goal is to help you understand those processes, how to support your body with food, lifestyle, and supplementation to optimize your energy, mood, and stress responses. These systems also play a critical role in how well you digest your food, make your hormones, manage inflammation, respond to immune challenges, and how you feel emotionally2. Learning how to support healthy balanced Energy, Mood, and Stress systems is a huge step in an overall healthy you.
We believe educating and empowering our members and clients is the most powerful way to impact their health goals. Almost everyone has some dysfunction in at least one of these two areas. Understanding how Digestion and Energy, Mood + Stress are connected to other health goals and bringing them into balance is an approach we’ve found that consistently makes the most significant impact on your holistic health and overall wellness.
About the Author
Christie Banners is a Functional Nutritional Therapy Practitioner as well as a yoga teacher. Her title here is Chief Wellness Officer. Sharing information about the powerful impact of balanced nutrition and lifestyle choices became her passion and purpose after experiencing dramatic changes in her own health and that of her family. Her mission is to make healthy eating fun and approachable, not perfect or unattainable. Food and lifestyle choices should not add to our stress. Instead they can bring us joy and satisfaction using a moderate, delicious, and sustainable approach to nutrition, as well as activity level and stress management. She hopes we can empower you to fuel your body, mind and spirit with the food and connection you need to thrive! Read more about Christie.
The information presented on this website is intended for educational purposes only. Statements within this site have not been evaluated or approved by the Food and Drug Administration. This content is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any specific condition or disease, nor is it medical advice and should not be considered a substitute for professional medical expertise. Readers of this content are advised to consult their doctors or qualified health professionals regarding specific health conditions or concerns. One should always consult a qualified medical professional before engaging in any dietary and/or lifestyle change or new health program. Curated Wellness does not take responsibility for any health consequences of any person or persons following the information in this educational content.
References:
1 Statovci, D., Aguilera, M., MacSharry, J., & Melgar, S. (2017). The Impact of Western Diet and Nutrients on the Microbiota and Immune Response at Mucosal Interfaces. Frontiers in immunology, 8, 838. https://doi.org/10.3389/fimmu.2017.00838
