Stress and body breakdown

By Sari Huhtala

Leafing through the pages of her textbook, Jamie Lynne Shaw shoves a spoonful of Honey Bunches of Oats into her mouth from a rather large bowl of cereal, licking her lips as she satisfies her usual evening craving for cereal or potato chips.  The sensation of the skin around her eye stretching pulls her attention away from her studies as she realizes her eye’s about to swell up again, as usual, just before exams. She pops a Tylenol to prevent the onset of any potential symptoms like slurred speech or numbness in her limbs, closes her book and lays her head on her pillow for yet another sleepless night.

It would take months of recurring symptoms before a holistic nutritionist would advise her to fix the health of her gut, stop the night time ritual of eating carbs, which she would discover was at the root of her sleepless nights, and take up meditation or another form of relaxation.

She hadn’t realized how the emotional stress of homesickness while away at university could trigger a stress response that would set off a cascade of symptoms, she says. Pair that with cafeteria food fare, bagels and subs on the run and that was enough to throw her gut health off track, completely, she adds. All of this, despite the fact she was “very healthy” as an athlete growing up, she says.

“The stress just got to me and strange things started to happen,” says Shaw.

“The night before exams I would wake up with a huge, swollen eye. I would look like I got stung by a bee. I think that was a stress response.”

A hive-like rash that spread over her limbs and back was the first symptom that cropped up, right after a hot shower. Initially she had tried to figure out if the rash was a reaction to a product, but then later realized it was her nervous system responding to the stress, she says.

The intelligence of the body is such that it churns out all kinds of signs and symptoms, sometimes even bizarre ones, to alert one of imbalance and dis-ease, Shaw, an Ottawa-based certified nutritional practitioner says. She had initially set out to study physiotherapy or another health stream at Western University, till her interest in holistic nutrition was piqued after she sought out natural approaches to heal her body.

Face wash for the acne, cortisol cream for the rash, Benadryl for the eye swelling and Tylenol for the symptoms of numb limbs and slurred speech became commonplace for her back in 2007 when signs of dis-ease began.  Signs abound that her body was out of balance, she recalls.

“Our bodies are so smart they’re trying to tell us these things,” Shaw says. “Medication is just a band-aid to relieve symptoms, but you never get to the root of the cause of the symptoms.”

“Increasingly, we’re seeing stress as the root cause of illness. If your gut’s not healthy, nutrients aren’t being absorbed, then that causes nutrient deficiencies, which can set the stage for chronic health issues.”

“Everything is connected. In conventional medicine that’s not how doctors approach health issues.”

When pharmaceuticals were the only solution doctors could provide, she decided to carve her own health path and scheduled a visit with a holistic nutritionist.

“It was all very foreign to me at the time,” Shaw says, but that’s when pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place.

The nutritionist looked at her diet, digestion and her lifestyle, and put it all into perspective for her.

Stress, in particular homesickness, set the stage for other health issues to manifest, she says. Traveling home on a seven-hour train ride twice a month, in between studies, led to extreme adrenal fatigue, she says.

Constantly feeding her “extreme sugar and carb cravings” caused “so much inflammation which then caused dysbiosis” – an imbalance in the gut microbial bacteria, she says. Dysbiosis can prevent the gut from absorbing nutrients.

Dysbiosis was causing rashes to pop up occasionally, she says. Vitamin deficiencies were causing a lack of energy. The adrenal burnout was causing her cortisol levels to spike in the evening when cortisol levels should have been dropping. She discovered consuming carbs or sugar in the evening, such as potato chips or cereal, wreaks havoc on blood sugar levels, causing cortisol levels to spike, disrupting sleep and causing insomnia.

“I was eating in evening, then blood sugar would crash and two to three hours later, it would cause a spike in cortisol levels and I’d wake up in the middle of the night.

“If you do need to eat, ensure your choosing foods that are high in protein and healthy fats, rather than carbs.”

“My skin was breaking out really bad, around my jawline, so I realized I had hormone issues going on, again connected to my gut. Acne is typically due to GI (gastrointestinal tract) issues or hormones.”

Stroke-like symptoms, including numbness in her limbs, slurring of speech and facial paralysis, surfaced a couple of times, she recalls. The doctor chalked it up to a form of migraine headache, and recommended Tylenol to prevent the migraine. However, she’s not so convinced.

She never had headaches or other signs of a migraine headache, she says.

She started taking Tylenol, “but thinking back now I question if that was even the right diagnosis in the first place,” she says.

The holistic nutritionist prescribed a course of action that would bring balance back to her body, and create an environment that allows the body to heal, she says.

Shaw started supplementing with probiotics, B vitamins, fish oil and digestive enzymes.

“I had really, really low energy. The B vitamins made a huge difference.”

She started to follow a gluten-free and dairy-free diet, despite being addicted to milk and cheese.

“When I grew up you had to finish your milk with your dinner,” Shaw remembers. “It’s packed with sugar and so disruptive to our microbiome. Dairy causes a lot of mucous build up in the body. There’s a lot of sugar in dairy, not to mention hormones and antibiotics in factory farmed milk.

“We’re putting all of that in our body and that’s what’s disrupting our hormones.

“As soon as I gave up dairy and gluten my skin started to clear up.”

Give up gluten for a happy gut, she says. If dysbiosis or candida is an issue, avoid sugars, even ones from natural sources like date and coconut sugar, to stave off the bad bacteria in the gut, rather than feeding the bad bacteria, she explains.

“Gluten and dairy are gut irritants, leading to inflammation in the gut. Gluten, in particular, is such an irritant to the gut lining.”

Although Shaw says she slowly transitioned to eliminate dairy and wheat, going cold turkey may have been a better way for her to tackle it, she says. This way she wouldn’t have been continually feeding the cravings, she says.

She suggests dairy addicts transition to goat or sheep cheese, which is easier to digest and doesn’t cause as much mucous as regular dairy products do. Nut cheese is also a good alternative, she says.

To get her stress levels in check, she started doing yoga and hot yoga, and adopted a night time routine enjoying a bath with Epsom salts and lavender, and listening to calming meditation and soothing sleep stories with Apps like Headspace and Calm.

She cut back on “endocrine-disruptors” by choosing all-natural bath and body care products.

It took about four months for Shaw’s health to turn around. That was when she was around 19 years old. People often expect to follow a protocol for a week and see their health turn around completely, Shaw says, but the dis-ease didn’t happen overnight, so healing takes time and is different for each individual.