Why Stress Is Making Your Hormones Worse (Even If You Eat Healthy & Exercise)

women, we are cyclical beings. The more we align with our circadian rhythm instead of defying it, the better off we. And I know for a fact that in perimenopause menopaus, e the more the body can understand what's coming and thus have the opportunity to stay in a healed state.

Do you feel like your hormones have turned against you? Trust us, you're not alone. We're Dr. Serena and Dr Heidi and on Hormone Heroines we explore all the root causes that are behind hormone imbalances and we teach you how to thrive through them.

Join us for real talk, expert tips and even a few laughs. Hi and welcome back to Hormone Heroines. Today we're going to be talking about chronic inflammation and the missing link in hormone imbalances for women in midlife with Dr.

Shivani Gupta who is a PhD and Ayurvedic practitioner and founder of Fusionary Formulas and she teaches natural remedies to reduce inflammation, and promote holistic health and vitality.

Welcome, we are so excited to have you. Thank you, thanks for having me. So let's dive right in with our first question of the day. Many women have normal hormone labs but still feel terrible.

What is often being missed in these cases? You know, I love teaching from an Ayurvedic perspective. And in the ancient wisdom, we talk a lot about what are those foundational pieces of health.

Ayureveda is a system that's over 5,000 years old. So in that wisdom what I loved is it talks about really core principles like our gut health is the center of all health, Our gut health is the center of our mood, of vitality, energy, metabolism, everything.

And so when we talk about women's hormone health in a very modern sense, we're talking about so much knowledge that we are gaining by studying the modern medical science, finally studying women and getting some data on us.

I know. Finally. And as we start to discover what's actually happening, what we're quickly seeing and learning as go right now in this like less than five year time period is women having a huge endocrine shift and hormone shift is a really big deal to all organs of the body.

And, as I watch this unfold, I keep thinking the ancient wisdom taught us we must live a circadian lifestyle. Ayurveda came up with the circidian clock.

gut health is the center of all health. And modern science has shown us that's the centre of us producing the hormones that we need to have. That is, the source of our inflammation if we have that leaky gut or intestinal permeability.

So that would be where I would start always. When we're looking at women's hormone health, yes, we probably need bioidentical hormone therapy. But what are the other missing links that if we don't get those foundational pieces in place, we're going to struggle regardless.

There's no get-out-of-jail-free card where it's like one peptide or one hormone. Unfortunately, I have tried that. I'm like, progesterone will just save me.

It'll be awesome. And I'll like pro gesterones will save you up to a point. You still got to do that gut health work no matter what. Yeah. Well, can you explain a little bit more about the gut hormone connection and why digestive health plays such a huge role in symptoms like fatigue, weight gain, brain fog, and of course, hormone disruption?

Absolutely. So just recently I came out with my new book, The Inflammation Code. And in the book, I talked a lot about how inflammation is this central piece to the puzzle that we forget to address.

And so when we talk about gut health and hormone health, we know that gut is producing those hormones. But we also forget, to acknowledge in mainstream society right now, that the majority of our population, at least here in The West or in US, is really struggling with a pretty high level of gut dysbiosis, leaky gut, pathogenic issues in the gut and that gut dysbiosis.

So every client I see who I partner with functional medicine or naturopathic medicine, we clearly see there's gut-dysbiosus issues here and we need to focus on helping our bacteria.

Exactly. It's pretty much every case. it's rare that someone walks in and is like, my gut stool test is perfect. Yeah, I've never seen one perfect, not even at kids.

Exactly, I mean, sometimes the kids are far worse. I did them on my children and was like, wow, we have work to do here. So the gut is where we're going to clear out the toxins.

Gut is, where if we had intestinal permeability, gut's inflamed, body is inflame, and nothing is working well. And we know that we this concept of if our gut health is not on point, were not going clear and detox and move through when it comes to our estrogen and our hormones.

And so from the Ayurveda perspective, I really look at this as are we detoxing on a seasonal or annual basis and clearing house? Because if we sit in the modern toxic burden that we're all experiencing right now and we don't pause to clear out and release the accumulations, Then we're going to have these struggles when it comes to hormone health, because we are inflamed as a society, the majority of us.

We are having lymphatic systems struggle and get backed up because were seated all the time, not moving enough, Not sweating enough. we don't even have practices in modern Western society around daily detox practices.

And that's where within the Ayurveda framework, we have daily self-care rituals that are designed to create that daily Detox opportunity. Nice. I love that.

Yeah, we are missing that in our society and I think we're all trying to crave that and if you look at social media, people are always like, what's a quick daily detox I can do?

So that's where you could really bring a lot of help to. to our culture as a whole. But there's a lot to unpack on what you just said but let's kind of start with just the chronic inflammation piece.

How does that quietly disrupt hormone balance in women especially during the perimenopause and menopausal period? For sure. So I think that when we're walking into perimenopause and menopausal, we know peri-menopase can last 10 to 15 years.

It really depends on when you enter and when your exit your perimeopas stage up to 20 years, so when were in that 10-15 year-ish period, I believe that one big issue we are having as women in modern day society is we were walking in to it each half decade more and more inflamed.

And so it's almost like we're running into it like a freight train. I know for myself, I was in my 30s and all of a sudden it was thyroid issues. And I went to functional medicine and I'm like, look, endocrinology says I am fine.

But I can tell you, i'm a pretty smart girl and i can't remember anything. i am having to keep post-it notes around me. My husband is like I told you to call the insurance company a month ago.

What's happening here? But my brain literally couldn't retain the information anymore. energy, motivation, mood, all these things can get so off-kilter.

And rarely do we get the opportunity to sit down with an integrative practitioner and say, hey, something is suboptimal. Something's not working. I need natural solutions here, natural remedies, maybe a hybrid between natural and pharma, but something that works.

As a society, I think we're not really serving what I would call that range of women who are saying something sub-optimals, It's not a full-blown disease situation yet, but there is something going on.

And so in perimenopause, it's very much that signal of hormones going up and down like the roller coaster. One day we're supported, one day, we are not.

We're trying to navigate it. All my clients are like, I'm trying do everything I normally do. But the symptoms keep stacking up. It is weight gain that's hard to lose, brain fog, memory issues, cognitive issues.

Fatigue, gut disruption. When you're eating, you are like, well, can I eat this or not today? Is my gut going to be robust enough to handle it or no? New food intolerances.

And so I think it's just such a time of fluctuation. From the Ayurvedic perspective, we really look at that as a vata, time-of-life. So we have language for different body types and different seasons, and we call this new season the Air Season of Life.

And so Vata Season Of Life means it's gonna have variability, but we also have the antidote for that. And the antidote for that is grounding. Like put your feet in the grass, put you feet on the sand, do as much grounding as you can throughout your day.

Warm cooked foods, root vegetables, anything that's from underground that'll ground your energy as well. Avoid cold, icy, raw foods. That's our homework.

And it's interesting because so many of us who were born around the 80s, I was born in 1980, Who are now in our mid 40s are like we're trained to eat low-fat or non fat We still have these habits around.

Okay, if I'm gonna diet, I'll eat a salad Okay. I should have I need 800 grams of protein a day now apparently let me drink two protein shakes made of ice per day and so these these things that we do we sometimes don't recognize how imbalancing they are and And the whole point of Ayurveda and even Ayureveda is such a sister science to naturopathic medicine that you practice.

The whole practice is about how do we build a yin and a yang? How do balance the energies that are going in different directions and keep you centered and grounded and whole and nourished?

So the body, which is then in a healing state, can do what it's meant to do. We aren't here to solve everyone's problems. we're actually here, to help the, body get into the natural healing, state it is meant, and the Body will handle the rest.

Yeah, we were actually really lucky at our school. We had Ayurveda classes that we could take while doing our ND. So that was fun because I did take some of those and that, that really eye-opening actually.

Yeah. I mean, there's so much depth in Ayureveda. Okay. And every year, I think I should just go back to India and like do another whole program and masters.

There's just, eons of wisdom. It's 5,000 years of Wisdom in these ancient texts, and it applies now more than ever, which I really love. I always look at it and I'm like, oh, this is my struggle with my health.

Irvina has the solution. Okay, got it. Yeah. Well, I think it's funny too, because it almost like if you were to really sit down and think about it, it is like common sense if we were think of it in the way that they present it Right?

So like the, the warming and the grounding and stuff. Like when I describe perimenopause to people, I'm like, it's like those air balloons at car lots that go like this and then down and up and down.

And you know, that makes a lot of sense to be grounded for that. Right. So, like if you're all kinds of going everywhere, being grounded would really help.

That's kind of like common sense, but we don't think of it that way. And then we don't practice it that way, nor are we consistent. And, then, we do not get those consistent results.

So, even I, myself, will say, okay, it's perimenopause. Could you just? But I still have these ingrown habits of, let's just eat less fat, or let us just have a protein shake a day even in the winter.

You have to really battle with those and say actually, this is the time of life I am in. I'm going to honor that. By honoring it, I will stay my most grounded and balanced.

Yeah I also think that in our culture as like western culture we're often missing that depth and like that traditional practice as well as just those routines and things that are interwoven into what would be like common practice over in India with Ayurvedic are interwoven into their daily life and over here we're always prioritizing like how can we just do everything faster and more productive and never focusing on having any of like that deeper connection or those traditions that really feed The soul or feed our bodies in that way.

And so I think, you know, Ayurvedic has all of that. If we did bring that in, that would give you the foundations to have better transitions, just like you're saying.

Absolutely. And I think that's a big piece of the whole puzzle, right? My own journey was I grew up in India and the United States. So when I was born here in the US, every time I went to the doctor, they would just give me a prescription for antibiotics.

They're like, you have a cold, here's some antibiotics, and that is what you did in through the 90s even. And then by the time I hit 2000, I had finished high school, in college, and I got so sick.

I was in India and would go to India every year and get disastrously sick there as well. This Dr. Gupta sat me down and they weren't sure what to do with me.

They were like, do we take this girl to the hospital? She's really sick! And he goes, I've got it. So he wrote me a prescription and it was antibiotic and had 12 other medications on there.

And so I asked him, what is all this? Like, can you describe it for me? My family got really annoyed. They're like, you don't ask a question like that.

You just take what the doctor gives you. I said, You know, as a 19, 20 year old now, i'm a little sick of people telling me what to do. when all I am is sick.

So I think the system is not working for me. This idea that they have isn't working in my body. My gut health, my immune system, I just don't have one.

And he said, well, that's an antibiotic and these other 12 medications are for symptoms. And some voice inside of me erupted out of my and just said, no, we're not doing this anymore.

I'm done. So I told him, could you drop your antibiotic down a couple notches? Can we not explode my gut? I am not taking your 12 random drugs with side effects.

And you didn't even mention a probiotic. And I walked out of there and I told my parents, we're in this land of yoga and Ayurveda. I think it has something for me.

Can we go figure this out? And so we traveled north, south, east, west through India, through the detox centers. And what I saw was these are profound centers of healing.

I mean, the level of tools we have in Ayurveda to detox people, to pull toxins out of them and really clear chronic disease is incredible. And I thought that there's so much wisdom there.

So my whole life dream from then onwards was, okay, if I get healed, how do I take all this home back to West to the United States and show everyone we can apply this?

It's not that complicated. But you're right, it requires you to slow down your life just enough to fit in a rhythm and rituals. And that actually goes against what modern day life is teaching us.

Modern day is life teaching is hustle, grind, push. You can build anything, you can do anything. And I just got through a book launch. And if I'm honest, I did that I pushed so hard because I had a house as a publisher.

I didn't want to disappoint them. come February, that was just book launch week, my entire body was like, no, we're done, you're don. And so now it's March and I'm calibrating.

The whole conversation inside myself is I know I have a rhythm and the rhythm that allows me to thrive. and I know the rhythm that allows me to be my happiest, and it's mandatory that I live according to that rhythm if I want to thrive.

And so that's really a core message I'm trying to share is as women, we are cyclical beings. The more we align with our circadian rhythm instead of defying it, the better off we The more we can align to those rhythms, the more the body can understand what's coming and thus have the opportunity to stay in a healed state.

The tornado is coming. Everybody batten down. So then, since we're talking about the circadian rhythm, how does the circuitian rhythm affect hormones, metabolism, sleep, and what are some simple daily shifts that women can actually just start with now?

For sure. So when Ayurveda came up with the circadian clock, Ayutthaya said we must live in rhythm with nature. Rise with The Sun, Set with Sun. Which in the biohacking, longevity space, we talk about that all day now.

We're clear. Wake up, get some sunlight in your eyes, don't stay in a dark blackout room. In the evening, Don't keep all your blue lights on. Allow your melatonin release to happen to support that sleep.

What's great about Ayurveda is we have a concept in Ayureveda called the Doshas, the mind-body constitutions. And those Doshias when I wrote my book, I translated it into elemental design and taught it in a way that we can apply it to every aspect of our lives.

So those three Dosa or elemental designs are called Vata, Vita and Gaffa. They represent air, fire and gaffas earth with water. And so, Ayurveda actually took the circadian clock and subdivided it more deeply, not just rise with the sun, set with sun but broke up our different times of day.

And, so we think of it as rising in the morning, 2 to 6 a.m. is vatha time of the day, you're meant to in that lighter time day wake up, meditate, do your breath work, the veil is the thinnest between us and the universe and it's a great time to pray, to set manifestations, these kinds of things.

6 to 10 a.m. is actually gaffa time of day. It's an earthy, slower time the day, so as we're rising, it's a beautiful time to do our self-care rituals that are detoxing.

Simple as, we love tongue scraping with a metal copper tongue scraper, and when you do that, you're gently scraping the tongue, gently detoxin' all the organs of the body, because we teach that all of organs on the bodies are reflected on tongue just like in reflexology, they're reflected in the bottom of your feet.

And so I love tongue scraping. I was like simple, free, easy. You buy the tongue scraper once, it's like 12 bucks, and you own it for life. And it kind of like that kickoff to the day.

Let's say you didn't pray, you don't meditate, You didn' do any of that peaceful stuff. At least the Tongue Scraper is your first reminder of, I do something for me.

I do self-care for me, I prioritize me. I know I matter too in my day. As a mother, sometimes I need that reminder because my entire life is built around other people and my children.

That's always my hardest part. Yeah! I did something good for my today. And then that's a cue to remind myself to do more. And then Ayurveda also teaches that 10 to 2, that highest time on that clock, 10-2 is bitha time of day, fire time day.

And so according to circadian rhythm, we know if the sun is highest in the sky, We have the most sunlight, energy, and power in our body. So your biggest projects can get done, but you're also meant to eat lunch in that window.

You're meant eat your big meal of the day You have that digestive fire there to absorb and assimilate it. So if you have hard to digest foods, if do love salad and raw foods that's your window to eat it.

Nuts and seeds, that your best window, to those foods. And then we teach two to six in the afternoon when most people are tired, brain fog, reaching for coffee, or reaching energy.

We call that food is six, vatha time of day. So again, it's this air ether time day, energy is scattered during that time. so we're meant to look at that and say, okay, what grounding snack can I have?

What can I do to get through kind of like little light errands and work, but never the serious heavy work? Because the brain energy is not going to be there.

I'm not gonna be powered for that. And then easing into your six to 10 p.m., we're actually meant to wind down. Here in the West, we think of six-to-ten as party, drink, happy hour, Netflix and chill, eat a late dinner, soccer practice till eight or nine, in my case.

This breaks all my circadian rules. And so I have really, in perimenopause especially, tried to learn to honor that, okay, you might need to work six to eight.

Let's say you need catch up because it was kid time, whatever the scheduling issues are. By seven o'clock, I want dinner complete. Walking for 10 to 15 minutes after, let's make sure we digest it well before we sit and rest.

By eight, nine o'clock, I want self-care rituals from Ayurveda in place that are our sleep hygiene habits. And Ayureveda wants us to sleep by 10. We want that 10 to two again at night that fit the fire to come out in clean and clear inflammation.

we do not want you sleeping at 11 or 12, skipping over your melatonin release, not allowing that to support you. And we really think of it as healing and rejuvenation, right?

That's that opportunity. So when people tell me they're inflamed, I'm like I will recommend turmeric all day. I am the turmeric girl. It's my PhD. But I really also want to focus on your sleep quality.

How do we get that good? So that's kind of a highlight of the circadian clock from the Ayurvedic perspective, but we do look at it a rhythm. like circling around a clock with rhythm.

And so I do that in different ways. I'd do it through the Ayurvedic self-care rituals. With tea time is me time. By very consciously setting boundaries at nine o'clock, I'm like, you guys don't want to sleep.

It's okay, i'm done. iIm going to bed. I am not talking to anybody. Please don''t talk to me.i'm finished. Just so everyone knows, like mommy's gonna take her shower.

She's going make sure she's done her sauna and everything. she''s going get in bed off limits, like I'm done with all responsibilities at a certain time.

I have teenagers, so I can say that now, I couldn't say until now. But the more we can kind of set those boundaries with everyone so they understand, hey, she's serious, and that's what she needs to be her happiest self, then the most likely we're going to get that for ourselves.

Yeah, and mommy will be toughier. Exactly, mommy would be nicer. Yeah exactly. Well then mommy can keep doing everything else for everyone. I think we burn the candle at both ends, right?

Yeah because if she doesn't take care of herself she can't keep up with everything she needs to do. Okay, so we just talked a lot about the circadian rhythm and how we can really decrease inflammation by following that.

But what are the most common lifestyle habits that unknowingly increase inflammation or worsen hormone symptoms in particular? Great question. Everything.

Western life. Living in America in the 2020s. Honestly, living across the whole planet. You know, when I wrote my book, I kept thinking, how do I explain to people all the things but not scare them to death that everything in our lives is really inflammatory?

But I truly do see it as between big food, big chemical, big everything, name any of them, there's kind of like this insidious external factor of everything that's made for us as humans.

Everything that is provided to us, everything surrounding us is pretty toxic. And so even living in a house in modern day life, the level of VOCs, microplastics, could be our Teflon pans, it could the cleaning products, skin care products.

Water quality, air quality. The toxin burden just keeps rising. Food quality level, of pesticides and herbicides on that food, lack of vitamins and minerals in the food.

So it's almost like we all need to be homesteaders who grow our own food and we're not all going to make the time for that. I know, I wish though. I wish I had like a home sitter wife who would actually do everything.

And then I could, you know, like we could be the perfect partnership. We could do a compound and then have somebody that's like, a stay at home wife that can do that stuff while we do our other stuff.

Yeah. I mean, honestly, in every partnership in the future, I wonder if we'll understand the importance of that and the necessity of it. to actually have a family that doesn't have chronic disease.

So I think of it as the toxic burden is significant. It is going to cause inflammation all by itself. Then the fact that our pH balance is oftentimes off, we tend to be more acidic rather than alkaline.

We know viruses, bacteria, anything that comes along and attacks the body. The body is gonna mount a counter response. Typically that's inflammation and inflammatory signal coming out of us.

We know stress causes inflammation because stress can cause intestinal permeability, which thus causes information. And then we also know that when it comes to our body, what we eat, What we consume on all levels can caused inflammation.

What I mean by that is certainly there's inflammatory foods, anything that's processed. anything that's got seed oils or just foreign to the body. The body's going to say, I do not know what to do with that.

That's an enemy. Let me react to it. But there are foods that are classically known to be inflammatory to many right now. So I don't eat gluten. I Don't much dairy.

i've cut it down to just parmesan for now as I try to get all dairy sugar. We know is anti is inflammatory, you know, alcohol's inflammatory. So there's a long list of what's inflammatory and it's just important to reduce our consumption of it or remove it based on how intolerant to those foods we are.

And then finally in Ayurveda, we talk a lot about what I coined in my book as mental inflammation. I was writing the book and I kept thinking, gosh, I'm gonna teach about all the ways the world is gonna inflame us.

But we also have some power we need to take back. And that is setting boundaries on our own minds. against the stresses of life that come at us, whether it's through the news or social media or maybe people around us.

And so mental inflammation was my way of saying your mental information can cause your physical information and then physical inflammation causes mental inflation.

This is a feedback loop. And that really ties into the current neuroscience around nervous system, parasympathetic that we're seeing. But it's also this awareness of, if I'm not feeling great, my guard gates are coming down.

I am not consuming anything from the outside. From an Ayurvedic perspective, why do so many women feel worse as stress increases? We kind of know that it causes more inflammation, but even if they've got their diet and exercise really dialed in, from an ayurveda perspective do they just feel so much worse even they're really trying to cut the inflammation down through all the other means?

Well, stress causes oxidative stress on the system. Stress stresses everything on us and in us. And so our cells are trying to do their absolute best, function in a normal way.

They're trying clean and clear out cells that are meant to go. When we talk about inflammation, sometimes we forget that the body is actually under such a tremendous amount of stress at a given time, it's already got the bucket full.

And because of the toxin burden, foods we eat, different situations in our lives, might be work, relationships, kids, we all have such an up to the neck full level of stress that we're already dealing with on a daily basis.

Then just take the world consciousness at a given time and add that on the plate and you've got a completely dysregulated person or system. And so IRB that really looks at it as we have a gut digestive fire.

Our job is to honor it. We're meant to put delicious nourishing foods in that are seasonal and circadian. Were meant eat for our individual elemental design and live by a lifestyle for are elemental designs.

We're meant to sleep on time and get really great sleep so we rest and rejuvenate and really re-nourish the system. And then we have a stress resilience because we've built a system that's really robust and strong.

So I focus on that, like how strong is my constitution, because I can't control life stressors. But sometimes we pile on too high. In my case, I piled on real high in a book launch.

And then one or two things got added on so far outside my expectation or control, and it was the tipping point. The whole thing can fall apart. We've had those moments of life that comes along at such a big level of trauma or tragedy or stressor.

I always tell everyone it's so important to have already built the resilience. Every day, we should be doing actions that refill the cup, re-support us to have that strength, that immunity, and that resilience to tolerate and deal with what life is going to throw at us.

And when we do that, then we have the support on board to deal everything. But if we don't, if you're like, well, I'm dieting real well. I exercise real.

Well, trying to control everything, that's not enough to really have resilience when your hormones and everything are going on a roller coaster. Okay, so from an Ayurvedic perspective, why do so many women feel worse as stress increases even when they've got the diet and exercise all dialed in, but the stress is just making it completely worse?

You know, oftentimes we think we can control everything. We can exercise well, eat well you know detox our lives, do some good self-care, and thus the result should be great.

And as I was writing my book, I really thought hard about why is it sometimes that we work so hard to have great health? We're doing the work, we're going the steps, yet we are still struggling with the symptoms.

And I think that's very much because as we add on more and more stressors, more plates spinning in the air, the body only has so much resilience. In IRV that we call that OGES, and that is like a completely new word.

I know I'm throwing a lot of IRB words at your audience today, but the first one was UGNI. Ugni is your digestive fire. If you have a strong digestive, that campfire, it's meant to absorb and assimilate all your food, then in end, we get this byproduct called OGEs.

Osha just means this vitality. And so you know when you're feeling incredible, feeling beautiful, you've got that glow, that energy in life, and everything's going your way.

That's a great feeling. The opposite of it is depleted, exhausted. You lost your mojo, can't focus. And this can happen after any surgery, it can happened after a big traumatic experience, after big stressful season, maybe we're caretaking for everyone else but not ourselves.

Maybe we got sick and took a course of antibiotics or anything really strong that kind of depleted all of gut health. And now it's our job to go back in and restore and replenish and rejuvenate the body.

And so stress to me is this insidious struggle that we oftentimes have, but we don't recognize when we're going way past our limit and past or resilience point.

And IRV that shows us how to refill that bucket, do rituals and do different habits each day that refill our bucket. So we have more of that resilience on board for whatever life throws at us.

I think we all need that. Can you give any specific examples on how a woman might reduce mental and emotional stress in a way that actually changes her biology and not just her mindset?

For sure. I Think number one, this starts with sleep. Sleep is where we rejuvenate. We clear the glymphatic system, the lymphatic in the brain, and the system of the body itself.

So if channels are moving, everything will work better and our stress resilience overall is going to improve. So many people who I meet say their sleep is fine.

A couple years ago, I created a sleep tea out of Ayurveda and a Sleep Formula, and I would go up to people and say, do you want to try some Sleep Tea?

They're like, my sleep was fine, And I thought, this is so interesting. How do, you know, if you don't measure it, how do know? And as an ayurvedic integrative practitioner, i do not want everyone wearing sleep and like Bluetooth assisted devices on your physical body 24-7, I'm not a fan of that at all.

I think that's got its own frequency issues with our bodies. But I do believe in taking tools and using them to measure at any given moment and saying, okay, how am I with this?

Do I need to improve my sleep? Sometimes when I pause and take a week and wear my aura ring, you put this on because you knew you had work to do and you have to figure out and like really understand where the struggle is for yourself.

And usually it's, I'm sleeping a little too late, eating a bit too later. There's always these classic things we do that shift our sleep quality. So number one, sleep.

I would say number two is really look at your diet and see, are you eating diet that's too lean? That's to stripping out of things as opposed to adding it back in.

Oftentimes, Ayurveda taught us that we're not eating for our constitution. And our constitution needs certain things. If you're an air type, you need more healthy fat in your day, more grounding root vegetables.

if you are fire like me, You need opportunities to cool down. Because we tend to be all fire every minute and burn through all of our reserves, all our energy.

We're so intense, we'll just consume everything. And then the gaffa type, the earth type. That person needs support in maybe holding bigger intermittent fasts, eating more cooked foods that are easier to digest for their body type and so we really in Ayurveda think of it as what are the habits, rituals and different routines you can put in place to support yourself.

another simple one would be tea time is me time. Tea time as me-time is something I came up with in the Ayurvedic self-care rituals, where as a busy entrepreneur, as mom trying to do everything all the time, I pause about five times a day and I have a cup of tea.

And I always just tune into myself and say, how are you doing today? What do you need to for today to be better? Would you change this week for this weak to me better.

And it's like a sacred moment or a mindful moment. It's a pause just long enough for my own intuition to come through and give me some answers. And mine usually comes through, and says, you need to say no to that.

You need, to make more time for you. We're not skipping yoga for one more conference. I'm always like, thank you, You are right. you're so right, I need this.

And that opportunity, I think, is the biggest one because oftentimes we're in our sympathetic nervous system. We're just go, go go. I know for me, any five minutes I'm either on Instagram and social media or I am in my list of things to do and in email.

So when do we give ourselves those beautiful sacred breaks in a day, drop into parasympathetic, let the body get out of the stress mode for a couple seconds, couple minutes, tune in words and ask the questions we need to ask to shift the course of our day.

Because if we're going to keep the blinders on and keep going, then of course that stress is going always be taking a toll and we are never giving ourselves a break from it.

Right. So we've talked a lot about things that we can do. What would be your top three tips for women that they can implement now to help reduce the stress like the tea time?

What are some other ones that you have that In the super busy mom world where we have three businesses, we both have multiple kids, so it's like we're always busy.

What would you suggest that we can do to fit into our super-busy lifestyle? Because I'm going from 6 a.m. until like 9 p. m. Yeah, now I know how you feel.

It's definitely a 6 a.m. to 9 or 10 p. m. job and it never ends. And I think that's a big reason why I created Tea Time is Me Time because it had to fit into the slots.

So I can make tea and get in the car to drop them to school in I can be in my office or home office, or business office either. I have tea kettles in all of them with tea ready and pause at mid morning and say, I get a cup of tea now.

And this is my quiet cup or tea alone. and I just get to pause mid-morning. i have my lunch, my pause-at-lunch I always carry lunch to work for me and my COO in the company.

We sit and have lunch and we talk about our personal lives, not our business stuff. And that's the 10-minute lunch break we take. And I make sure I've hand-packed our organic, healthy meal from home in a glass container that goes in the toaster.

I refuse to microwave anything in my life. So that is another way I'm consciously taking care of myself. Then I have high tea every day at 3.30. I pause my day and I am like, this is high teatime, I get tea, I get a snack. And I use that as my transition moment between work and picking up the kids.

Some days it's at four, some days 430, just depends on the schedule. But I make sure I take that time so that I'm in the right mind frame before I get to my children and embark on that next section of the day of motherhood.

And then by early evening, let's say I'm home and I am not at soccer or voice or whatever the things are, I have a different type of tea I drink that's ayurvedic and adaptogenic that specifically calms down the nervous system.

Because sometimes even I myself am going too fast, running a hundred miles an hour, and i don't know how to shut my own mind off, i'm still in work mode in my house on my couch.

And so I drink that tea, it's called unwind tea. It has ashwagandha, Brahmi. Sometimes I need two cups of it to settle down and really calm down, and let the business day go and ease into a calmer evening.

And my newest habit is I'm reading fiction books again, And I am finding it the best thing I could do for stress and mental health. just read fun novels in my free time, as opposed to getting on Facebook or Instagram, because the world is really stressful and I don't always have control over the entire planet, but I can control my own mental peace.

And then by evening, I always make my last cup of tea, deep sleep tea. Again, adaptogens calm my mind down for a higher quality night's sleep. So I use those points as my rhythm points.

Well, I'll pause and I'm like, okay, well, what's for dinner? What are you going to eat? I can't always eat what I serve my children. I need less carbs, higher protein.

So I use those breaks as these little check-in points. And because it's a check in point with myself, Nice. I also love the fiction part because we're big fiction readers.

We always read a little bit in bed before we go to sleep. Yeah, we have an unofficial book club at work. Nice! Well, I just took nine days and read the Akotar book series.

That's one we've been through, yes. I feel like I went on the best vacation and honestly I had already started like acupuncture, chiropractor, all the self-care things I know are rejuvenative and reset my nervous systems.

And I think just the gift of using all my free time to read and not be on social media was the biggest reset button I could have gifted myself in this year.

Now I feel energized and clear and ready to go back to work at, I wouldn't call it full pace, but my new pace. Reasonable pace and I wonder if we just need to gift ourselves that, like get off social and read happy books and fall into different worlds in our imagination again.

And that's simple and free. Like we knew that one since we were kids. We've just forgotten it in this modern world of social media addiction. Yeah. Yeah.

I have to read to go to sleep. And I prefer to, because I read so much medical research all day long, I'd prefer it to be fun fiction, like witchy, fantasy books.

Me too. All day. Yeah, and that's nourishing too, we're teaching about what's nurturing. It's whatever is nourish to you and making space for it. Where can people find your book?

So my book, The Inflammation Code, is on my website at ShivaniGupta.com. And the quiz I was talking about, Your Elemental Design, if you want to know your elemental design, it's also on website.

So you can take the elemental designed quiz and it'll tell you. Are you more air? Are more ether? Air ether, are you are more fire? Or are your more earth?

And then I mentioned those T's that I created. Those are in my supplement company, Fusionary Formulas. Perfect. Awesome. We will put those links in the show notes as well.

Yeah, and I will say when you tried her teas when we were all at a conference back in Vegas, you loved them. I was pregnant. She was so she couldn't have them, but I loved I had them I.

Was super bummed I didn't get to try them but, I'll order some now. You can try now that you had the kiddo. But chathavari, the whole seed, these are very cooling herbs.

And what I find is as women, we resonate so well. The herbs are what our body knows what to do with, and to give them in full tea form is how Ayurveda would have always given it to us in whole plant form.

So to make tea like that, a menopause tea, asleep tea and unwind tea is so powerful. Then we didn't even get to the turmeric conversation, but I love turmeric and its power as well We can definitely have another podcast where we talk about that too.

For sure. Anytime. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us. It was a wonderful conversation and hopefully we'll have you back here soon. Awesome.

Thank you. Bye. Thanks for having me. You know how us women are always just pushing through it. And then when we go to find help, we're often not taken seriously or told, oh, that's just part of being a woman.

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