Brain Fog, Weight Gain, and Anxiety In the Time of Coronavirus

Our nation is currently going through a crisis with the spread of coronavirus COVID-19. The economy has almost altogether stopped, social gatherings and other typical forms of stress release (going to the gym, traveling) have state-wide mandates to stay home, and stay six feet apart. Our finances are at stake as a recession looms in the near future. All of us have had to adapt to new skills, new technology, and great wherewithal to stay on top of the problem and get through this trying time, as our society moves into the unknown.

This threatens our well being, as well as the health of our loved ones. Our work has become highly focused around self-management, and our ability to accomplish so much in a short period of time. With coronavirus, the pressure we are putting on ourselves to perform in spite of all these factors is great, and I would wager many people have gone through waves of panic, overwhelm, or stress, fearing for their lives or buckling under the pressure.

Stress and anxiety may be at an all time high for you right now. Governor Cuomo is describing ‘Cabin Fever’ on his press briefings as a kind of syndrome. The mental/emotional part of this virus is equally sympathetic to the other symptoms of insomnia, IBS, bloating, headaches, mood swings, pain, acne, fatigue, weight gain that may be resulting.

If the body is in a high state of stress during this time, the nervous system shifts to sympathetic. Blood is pushed to the extremities, away from the organs and digestive system, our heart rate goes up, and our breath increases and our pupils dilate.

Little versions of "stress" can mimic these same body processes - it is a spectrum. In a state of stress, the body has difficulty digesting, storing, and distributing our food. The function of the bowel as well as the absorption of our food into our bloodstream does not work because our blood, due to the sympathetic nervous system, is pumping to get us out of this stressful situation.

Our appetite can suffer greatly - either binging on carbs and sugars, greasy or processed foods (whatever comfort food or quick and easy food we can find to settle down), or completely losing all appetite and going into starvation mode.

The vagus nerve is the main nerve connecting the brain to the digestive system. This nerve attached to the pons of the lower brain stem and goes down behind the muscles around the thyroid of the neck, and behind the esophagus to just about the diaphragm where it then becomes the esophogeal plexus nerve which branches into honeycomb shapes along the entire digestive system below the diaphragm. This is the nerve sends signals directly to our digestion to instruct how it needs to move, transform, and store our food.

When we are stressed, food cannot be digested properly. If we are binging, we eat so much that our bowels swell with fluid to try and condense what we have eaten, and our body has to work overtime to digest the overwhelming amount of food. This is especially so if we are not chewing our food properly and swallowing whole unprocessed chunks of food. Pay attention to the number of times you are chewing your food. If you are chewing 4-5 times and swallowing, we need to double or triple that - this could have been a behavior learned under stressful situations eating, conditioned or environmental. Chewing is the first part of digestion - the salivary amylase that gets secreted in our mouth with chewing, renders our food more bio available because it is pre-digested for the organs to immediately put to use.

Not only does binging lead to the poor absorption of our nutrients, minerals found in healthy complex carbs carbs, fats and proteins in that food, but it can slow the ‘smooth flow of qi’ as the Liver does in Chinese medicine, creating Liver chi stagnation- pain, cramping, lack of blood flow, disruption or obstacles in the ribs, sides, digestion where food moving through the bowel can stay lodged and have trouble being absorbed and eliminated. In a more extreme case this causes SIBO (Small Intestine Bacterial Overgrowth), or diverticulitus where a part of our bowel balloons out from the digestive tract, trapping food and waste and causing inflammation and acute pain like appendicitis, or at the worst level, necrosis of the bowel where lack of blood flow from impacted bowel causes cell tissue death and needs to be removed in surgery. Secondary gut issues can occur such as candida, parasites, and gut dysbiosis. The long term affects of these are allergies and other acute or chronic autoimmune disorders.

If we are so stressed we have lost our appetite - our body is already into starvation mode before we are even aware of it. This is a precursor to binging, if we are not careful. Once we get our appetite, we are craving quick release fats and sugars in the form of carbs (processed white-flour carbs as well as natural carbs in vegetable and fruits). And we are likely feeling foggy and light headed because we don’t have enough healthy fat and protein for our brain.

In both cases, whatever we do choose to eat under stress and sympathetic nervous activity, will more likely be stored into our fat cells because our body thinks it is in danger - we don't know when we will get our next meal as cortisol circulates through our bloodstream and tells us to conserve calories while we run away.

Eating (as well as sex and sleeping) falls under the parasympathetic nervous system, so already we can see how eating can be used to combat stress when our body is trying to bring all back down to a normal state. A normal state of calm, happy, energetic and living ease.

Eating is also represented in Chinese Medicine as the origin of fluids and blood in our body which nourish all tissues, joint, bones, and orifices of the face. So if we aren’t absorbing enough, we aren’t making enough of these fluids for our body. Or there is an imbalance of fluids like much estrogen or not enough testosterone to balance out the estrogen, then there is fluid back up, congealed fluids, tumors, lumps, and substantial phlegm at the worst level. Estrogen and testosterone levels are affected by circadian rhythms, exercise, and of course the food we eat.

A busy couple hours logged at work or plugged into our phones reading the news, or even binge watching a show with stressful themes or suspenseful music; video games with violence and death (let alone coronavirus-related deaths); going to the grocery store or doctor, to and from appointments, running late or having to rush to things, all cause this stress response.

Our body can be plugged into and tolerate quite a high level of stress on a day to day basis. It is undercover and only manifests as one symptom every once in a while. But when that one symptoms turns into many symptoms, and when it’s repeatedly the increasing norm, that’s when everything gets out of hand.

Just because most of us are home and things are at a standstill, does not mean we don't experience a lot of stress with what all of us are going through in our own way with this. For many parents, they have to work double-time monitoring and helping their kids with school work and structuring their day while they also try and get the work at their job done. For others living with tons of responsibilities to their job and families, or difficult, toxic or even abusive family members or loved ones or siblings, this is another incremental layer of the stress stimulus that can go out of check. And still for others who are working from home without these factors, the pressure to perform and adapt is high.

During our workday, as we take on working from home, it is necessary to take breaks throughout the workday and get adequate nutrition. As I mention in this video, planning out our meals ahead of time can take away a whole slew of decision-making in our workday which can cause decision fatigue. If we don't have meals of healthy food to eat throughout the day - three or so major meals and three or so intermittent snacks - we are running on deficiency chi. If this is chronic, deficient blood and further than that, deficient jing/essence which is stored in Marrow in Chinese Medicine.

We get to the pantry or our fridge and feel so overwhelmed with the choices, guilt, and lack of energy we feel. The food itself, the quality of it, and the state of our finances also play a role as we hunker down. If we want to make changes to our health for life, food must be a priority.

Here we often choose the easiest and most available thing just so we feel less hungry and can keep working. This actually impairs our productivity by a lot because most of those foods are in most cases mineral deficient starches (potato chips, corn, GMO flours). We can be standing in the kitchen stressing about what to make for food when really we should be pouring a healthy amount of stress into our word to keep our livelihood. This is why it can be extremely beneficial to pre-make food or make extra at breakfast or dinner time to have left over, or have a meal delivery service drop off meals if that's within your budget. I will go more into kinds of foods Chinese Medicine encourages in another blog post.

The last point I'll make is that many of us could use to eat much much more than we are eating in our day-to-day. Last November, after struggling with major bloating, bowels that weren't formed, brain fog, mood swings and fatigue, I realized I wasn't eating the amount I needed for my 6 foot, 165 pound frame.

There are 2,000 cellular processes that occur in the 300 trillion cells in our body EVERY SECOND. We need to nourish our body so it can perform its very best, eliminating oxidative stress on our body (free radicals that cause cell death, or malfunction in the form of disease). By eating enough, we create a healthy amount of blood that has the mediumship in our body tissues to move all throughout the body, nourishing cells, and taking away cell waste.

If we don't have adequate amounts of food for our body type, we actually age ourselves by a lot, looking older. This is because we have to tap into our marrow, our bones, and the fat cell that make up our brain to fuel the cell processes and amino acid deficiencies that aren't able to work without certain chemical compounds found in organic matter. The best source of these chemical compounds is our food. If we have to keep getting energy from our own body cells to live, OR the food we are eating is so mineral and nutrient deficient, that it's actually TAKING from our body tissues, we are setting ourselves up for premature aging and a deficient immune system - the perfect breeding ground for a whole host of autoimmune diseases, falling ill with the cold and flu every few weeks, and just generally being run down and perpetually cranky.

Since I started eating more consistent quantities of real produce, fats, and complex carbs, my stomach has trimmed down, my brain fog has gone away, and my metabolism has increased. As you can see, because our food metabolism is so linked to our nervous system and our mood with mental health and brain health - the right quantities of the right food also helps with overall anxiety with their secondary feelings of depression at having doom and gloom about the state of our future.

I will be speaking about this more consistently in upcoming weeks as I prepare to launch my talk:
"Wacky Hormones Reset: Give Fat, Stress, and Fatigue the Boot With These Four Thyroid Pillars"

I'm excited to share more with you! Stay tuned.