#AskWelleCo: Do Your Thoughts Impact Your Health?
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WelleCo formulator Dr. Simone Laubscher Ph.D, a Clinical Nutritionist and Naturopath, on the connection between mental and physical wellbeing
Q: I’ve been feeling really anxious and stressed lately, and I’ve noticed that my body has also been feeling out of sorts. Could my thoughts be linked to my health?
A:Your thoughts and emotions directly affect your health. As humans, we consist of around 50 trillion cells. Our thoughts affect all of our cells, organs, and 11 systems, which in turn can either support us to be well or increase inflammation and potentially make us sick.
So how can we find our mind-body balance and minimise toxic thinking to reduce inflammation? Here are my top tips on how you can think on purpose to shift into the best version of yourself.
Start your day right
How you start your day is critical if you want your day to flow, so this is now a non-negotiable part of my wellness routine. I always start with two teaspoons of The Super Elixir™ or wellness water – 500ml of room temperature or warm purified water plus the juice of 1/2 a lemon, freshly grated ginger to taste and fresh mint leaves torn into the water, so I feel mentally and physically strong for my day ahead. If you have been fasting through the night, this is a great way to break your fast.
Grow your mindfulness muscle
Try this mindfulness exercise each day to bring your thoughts back into a healthy space. Sit quietly, focus on your breath and run through your day in your mind like a movie. See yourself moving through your day with ease, responding kindly to triggers and staying out of emergency mode.
Imagine all of your cells in optimum health, your mind and body working as a team for your greater good. Visualise yourself handling any stress efficiently, and stay in flow. Sit with this feeling for 2 minutes and feel yourself in optimum health and harmony.
If at any time of the day you find yourself slipping into emergency mode or fear, take three deep breaths and return to this state of bliss. Doing so will train your nervous system out of inflammatory thoughts and to maintain your vibration of faith, gratitude and healthy beliefs.
Cultivate self-love
I use inner child work with my clients to cultivate self-love. Often it is our inner child who is rejected, displaced and abandoned as we grow up. We often get so in our heads, we no longer live from a place of being integrated with self-love. Most of us have made mistakes as adults, and loving ourselves can be tricky, but thinking of the child version of ourselves can allow self-love to flow.
Each morning and night, take a few moments to send your inner child some love. Think about specific memories and put your hands on your heart or belly to connect with your inner child and offer unconditional love and understanding. We are our own worst enemies, so let yourself off the hook, learn from your mistakes and choose to be kind and address your healing in a loving way.
Release tension
I love primal scream therapy for releasing trapped emotions and trauma. If you have significant trauma, I would do this with a practitioner, but for many, the feelings of fear, sadness, anger and grief can be felt and released safely. Allowing yourself to feel this emotion is a powerful act of self-love, and as adults we push these emotions down, which in turn can make us sick.
An excellent place for you to start is to allow yourself to feel a negative or trapped emotion and allow this feeling to bubble up inside your entire body – to the point you feel ready to scream into a pillow. Repeat this three times, so you permit yourself to feel this emotion without judgement. Then scream it out so you can let it go.
Eat well
One of the key ways to reduce inflammation is to support your body’s ability to digest food and your emotions. By supporting healthy blood sugar regulation and gut health, you will feel physically more balanced, keeping inflammation at bay and allowing yourself to live from a grounded place to deal with your emotions.
Ensuring you have an excellent organic source of protein and good fat at each meal, such as nuts, seeds, fish, avocado, olives, or vegan yoghurt, is a beautiful blood sugar balancer. Hence, you feel mentally and physically strong.
Increasing fibre, high in prebiotics, is also great to support gut-brain health. I recommend sauerkraut, chia, flax, pumpkin and sunflower seeds, chicory inulin, psyllium husks and lots of veggies to give your good bacteria food it prefers. To support gut-brain-connection, make mealtimes peaceful, don’t watch the news or engage with a stressful email, for this will impair gut function.
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