July 3, 2024

Understanding Anxiety: Rewiring Your Brain for Better Health with Dr. Karen Cureton [Ep. 102]

Understanding Anxiety: Rewiring Your Brain for Better Health with Dr. Karen Cureton [Ep. 102]

Today I have the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Karen Cureton, a naturopathic physician, acupuncturist, and neuroplasticity practitioner. We  delve into the fascinating science of neuroplasticity, exploring how our brains can be rewired to improve emotional responses and overall health. Dr. Cureton explains the impact of chronic stress and anxiety on our physical well-being and offers practical tips for reducing these stress responses. Learn how emotional eating, weight management, and chronic health issues are interconnected with our mental state. Stay tuned to the end to learn how you can get access to free trainings to do this yourself! 

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More from Dr. Karen Cureton:


About Dr. Cureton:

Dr. Karen Cureton is a licensed naturopathic physician, acupuncturist, passionate neuroplasticity practitioner, and co-creator of the Wired for Wellness program.

Through her own journey with complex chronic illness, anxiety, depression, and PTSD as well as from treating hundreds of patients with complex chronic illness, she realized the profound impact that stress physiology has on all aspects of health.  By rewiring her brain and rebalancing her nervous system, she was able to free herself from anxiety, depression, PTSD, many physical symptoms and stress patterns.  She has since helped many clients do the same with diverse health issues, traumas, and self-sabotaging patterns. Dr. Cureton is now a firm believer that everyone with a chronic mental, emotional, or physical health issue will benefit from neural retraining, and in many cases it is critical to healing.



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Transcript

WEBVTT

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This is the Eat Well, Think Well, Live Well podcast.

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I'm Lisa Salisbury, and this is episode 102.

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Understanding anxiety rewiring your brain for better health with Dr.

00:00:09.449 --> 00:00:10.289
Karen Cureton.

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Dr.

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Karen Cureton is a licensed naturopathic physician, acupuncturist and neuro-plasticity practitioner.

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Today, she and I discuss anxiety and the limbic system and fight or flight, which you've probably heard about.

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But Dr.

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Cureton has a different way of approaching the solution to anxiety rather than just through the thought feeling pathway.

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Stay tuned to hear how chronic anxiety can affect other systems of the body, including our ability to release weight.

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We also discuss what a healthy amount of stress is and in what situations.

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That might occur.

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Welcome to Eat Well, Think Well, Live Well; the podcast for women who want to lose weight, but are tired of counting and calculating all the food.

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I'm your host, Lisa Salsbury.

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I'm a certified health and weight loss coach and life coach, and most importantly a recovered chronic dieter.

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I'll teach you to figure out why you are eating when you aren't hungry, instead of worrying so much about what you are eating.

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Welcome back to the eat well, think well, live well podcast.

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I'm delighted to have Dr.

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Karen Cureton on with us today.

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She is a naturopath and I'll let her introduce herself and tell us all about what she does.

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And then we'll get into our conversation.

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Dr.

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All right.

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I'm a naturopathic physician and an acupuncturist and also a neuroplasticity practitioner.

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The last one, a lot of people are probably going to go, huh, what is that?

00:01:39.317 --> 00:01:48.507
Well, you know, we've accumulated a lot of science, neuroscience in recent history, but how we can change the brain to have it produce more of what we want.

00:01:48.787 --> 00:02:08.062
Um, including, you know, different sort of default emotional responses in our lives, and it turns out that that is really important for health that if we're spending too much time, you know, in fight or flight or in freeze, you know, these stress responses or survival responses.

00:02:08.798 --> 00:02:27.777
Then, um, it derails our health and that can include our weight, actually, and, um, our relationship with food can be dramatically impacted by that if food is one of the early coping mechanisms we learned for, you know, dealing with our emotions, right?

00:02:28.402 --> 00:02:35.793
Which so many, I mean, that's so common because that's pretty easy for parents to be like, Oh, you're fussy.

00:02:35.802 --> 00:02:37.923
Let's feed you Here's a snack.

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And I mean, it's just, and, and by the way, like as parents, nothing's gone wrong.

00:02:43.312 --> 00:02:47.812
Of course you did that, you know, cause I'm a parent, I did that.

00:02:47.842 --> 00:02:47.992
Like,

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Yes, everybody's doing it.

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It's not like you've ruined your kids if you did that or something.

00:02:53.627 --> 00:02:58.807
It's just that it's just part of our lives that we learn from a very young age that food helps.

00:02:59.693 --> 00:03:00.532
Yeah, exactly.

00:03:00.532 --> 00:03:25.832
And I think that where our, culture and society have sort of fallen short is really in Emotional intelligence and learning other coping mechanisms that truly work for helping us deal with our emotions, not only in the moment, but also to change the patterning so that our emotional habits don't keep replaying in our lives over and over again.

00:03:25.832 --> 00:03:33.282
And so that's what I help people do now is to rewire primarily their stress patterning that is fueling.

00:03:33.478 --> 00:03:41.527
You know, unhealthy behaviors that aren't really serving them and they don't want, um, as well as their health, their physical health.

00:03:41.638 --> 00:03:52.948
and a lot of people that are working with me are working with me specifically because they have those kinds of issues that they want to recover from or change, you know, change in themselves.

00:03:54.043 --> 00:04:00.723
Yeah, being a naturopath is such a different type of positioning, such a different type of doctoring.

00:04:01.082 --> 00:04:09.393
People come to you really not so much because they have an acute illness, but that they want to up level their health in some way.

00:04:09.393 --> 00:04:10.723
Would you say that would be accurate?

00:04:11.592 --> 00:04:25.783
Yeah, I would say I don't tend to treat acute illnesses very often, but my practice has historically always been focused on people with chronic illnesses because that's the population that tends to fall through the cracks of conventional medicine.

00:04:25.793 --> 00:04:26.413
But you're right.

00:04:26.423 --> 00:04:30.463
The other population is people who are doing okay with their health.

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They just want to have optimal health.

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Right.

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And so naturopaths are also much, much better at that because we just have better training for that.

00:04:40.038 --> 00:04:51.307
Yeah, optimizing health, I think is just so underrated and really part part a little bit about what I do as well as a health coach and life coach.

00:04:51.307 --> 00:04:56.858
I talk about how life coaching is appropriate for people who are functioning, but want to up level.

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If you're not functioning, you're not getting out of bed.

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You're not being able to go to work.

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You need therapy.

00:05:01.887 --> 00:05:05.767
If you're doing all those things, but you're like, I want to achieve more.

00:05:05.807 --> 00:05:07.067
I want to reach more goals.

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I want to, you know, A lot of times for me, it's with my clients, it's weight loss goals or improving their relationship with food.

00:05:14.843 --> 00:05:18.252
And so they're like, I'm doing okay, but I could be better.

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And so I love that we have that kind of thing in common.

00:05:20.892 --> 00:05:23.452
So I think I really like connect with naturopaths.

00:05:23.452 --> 00:05:28.033
They are not the first one I've had on and I, and I work with my own naturopaths.

00:05:28.072 --> 00:05:34.913
So, um, yeah, one of the things we really wanted to dive into is the.

00:05:35.507 --> 00:05:39.918
Relationship to our emotional eating with anxiety.

00:05:40.437 --> 00:06:01.237
So a lot of us really struggle with anxiety, and I assume I also like to clarify this and kind of be clear that because I'm not a doctor, and you know, this is not medical advice, we're talking about little a anxiety, we're talking about everyday anxiety, that emotion that we all experience.

00:06:01.237 --> 00:06:03.387
We're not talking about big a.

00:06:03.588 --> 00:06:07.098
clinical anxiety, needs a diagnosis, needs medication.

00:06:07.117 --> 00:06:09.447
I, would you be, would you agree with that?

00:06:09.458 --> 00:06:12.418
That's kind of what we're talking about in this amount of anxiety.

00:06:12.677 --> 00:06:17.358
I am actually talking about the kind of anxiety that becomes chronic, right?

00:06:17.358 --> 00:06:22.773
So we have this We all have anxiety from time to time, right?

00:06:22.783 --> 00:06:26.043
That's part of a flight response, right?

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And every single human on the planet sometimes goes into flight.

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And when you're in flight, you're likely to feel anxious, or worried, or scared, right?

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That's the emotional state that goes along with it, right?

00:06:37.562 --> 00:06:39.702
But what can happen that...

00:06:40.028 --> 00:06:59.468
Really can have a more significant impact on our health and our weight is when the limbic system in the brain, which is responsible for determining if we're going to go into fight or flight or into freeze, it can get confused based on your life experiences and misinterpreting them as a disease.

00:06:59.468 --> 00:06:59.548
Thank you.

00:06:59.807 --> 00:07:01.557
more threatening than they are.

00:07:01.968 --> 00:07:13.127
And once that happens, then somebody can become chronically anxious, which goes into that realm of the diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder.

00:07:13.767 --> 00:07:23.377
But I'm also speaking to people out there who have very specific triggers for their anxiety, but every time they encounter that trigger, they get really anxious.

00:07:23.377 --> 00:07:26.452
So it's this Um, learned pattern, right?

00:07:26.452 --> 00:07:40.353
So, like, performance anxiety or social anxiety or, you know, parenting's anxiety that's 24 7, anything like that, um, can also be rewired in the brain so that it stops playing out in someone's head.

00:07:40.673 --> 00:07:42.382
System and in their lives.

00:07:42.692 --> 00:07:49.273
And once you're able to do that for people, then their health can recover, including they can lose weight more easily.

00:07:49.273 --> 00:07:51.663
And I'd be happy to explain that a little bit further.

00:07:51.673 --> 00:07:54.408
But that's the kind of population we're working with.

00:07:54.853 --> 00:07:55.302
Okay.

00:07:55.762 --> 00:08:18.622
So, it really is, though, a lot of general population, we're not, I guess what I mean is, if you have disabling anxiety where you probably need to be medicated, I just am really cautious that people don't take, General podcasts as medical advice, because if you have that type of anxiety that is completely debilitating, you need to see a doctor.

00:08:19.487 --> 00:08:19.826
Yeah.

00:08:19.826 --> 00:08:36.437
You know, what I like to say is like, if you have a really severe mental illness going on, you know, you are struggling with things like active mania, active suicidality with intent and a plan, you know, psychosis, schizophrenia, personality disorders.

00:08:36.447 --> 00:08:38.947
All those things are outside the realm of what I do.

00:08:39.356 --> 00:08:41.777
But if you are just a highly anxious person.

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We help people like that all the time.

00:08:43.897 --> 00:08:46.736
People who are having panic attacks daily.

00:08:46.817 --> 00:08:52.647
We help those people to resolve the panic attacks, stop the panic attacks without medication.

00:08:53.456 --> 00:08:59.576
And that doesn't mean that somebody can't lean on medication temporarily as they're doing this work.

00:08:59.817 --> 00:09:00.907
That's totally okay.

00:09:01.256 --> 00:09:08.501
However, you know, we also know that some of these medications are incredibly damaging actually.

00:09:08.831 --> 00:09:14.131
And so if somebody can avoid taking a benzodiazepine, I highly recommend it.

00:09:14.392 --> 00:09:19.662
Um, but that is a decision for you to make with your own mental health practitioner.

00:09:20.422 --> 00:09:29.231
But even so, those we do know the data on benzodiazepines now is that they damage the brain over time and they make it much more likely that you'll develop Alzheimer's disease.

00:09:29.631 --> 00:09:44.991
So I, you know, part of My passion around this topic is to help people not have to go that route towards medication that could end up harming them more than helping them in the long term, right?

00:09:45.001 --> 00:09:53.591
So, yeah, so rewiring the brain, oftentimes we are able to get people out of panic attacks in somewhere between a week and a month.

00:09:54.317 --> 00:09:57.976
Their panic, we are able to stop their panic attacks from replaying.

00:09:59.456 --> 00:10:04.037
In terms of chronic anxiety, let's say somebody has been highly anxious their whole life.

00:10:05.037 --> 00:10:18.157
That type of patterning, you know, usually takes longer to resolve because you have a huge neural network in your limbic system that is very strong and very potent and very easily triggered.

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And the bigger and stronger a neural network is in the brain, the more likely it is for its...

00:10:23.817 --> 00:10:25.777
you know, firing to occur.

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And so that means that if you've got a huge neural network for anxiety, then you're very likely to feel anxious a lot of the time, right?

00:10:34.517 --> 00:10:41.096
So when you want to rewire something like that, it takes a little bit longer because you've got to break down that neural network.

00:10:41.626 --> 00:10:50.317
And the way that we go about that is a very specific, uh, approach to rewiring things in the limbic system.

00:10:51.307 --> 00:10:58.687
So, our approach involves addressing the roots of the tree, which is usually memories and belief systems.

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So, usually, when somebody is highly anxious, and has been their whole lives, early in childhood, there was usually a number of events that made them feel less safe.

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In the world, and it could be really simple stuff.

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It's not always big traumas.

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A lot of people think, Oh, my childhood was okay.

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I don't have a reason for being highly anxious.

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Well, my childhood was okay, too, but I ended up a extremely anxious person for over a decade of my life.

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And until I found these tools, and I tried many approaches to mental health before that.

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Talk therapy, did absolutely nothing.

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Um, you know, I did like shamanic work and psychedelic therapy and so many other things.

00:11:43.596 --> 00:11:48.297
And it just didn't touch my own trauma or my own anxious patterning.

00:11:48.777 --> 00:11:51.626
But rewiring the brain is what actually did that.

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And that's the story a lot of my clients have too, is like, wow, I tried everything.

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I thought nothing was going to work.

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This actually changed things for me.

00:12:00.085 --> 00:12:13.125
So, how do these conditions really, impact the rest of the body then, if we've got all these, all this anxious energy happening, like, how does that impact other systems and other parts of the body?

00:12:14.215 --> 00:12:14.565
Yeah.

00:12:14.565 --> 00:12:18.375
So when we, you know, flip into fight or flight, right.

00:12:18.375 --> 00:12:31.865
And as I was talking about the emotional correlates of flight, our anxiety, worry, fear, things like that, when we are spending a lot of time in that state, or even we're just, we just flipped into it.

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What happens is the limbic system made that signal and it said, Hey, it's time to go into flight.

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And then that signal got transmitted from the brain to every single organ system in the body.

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And every single organ system in the body will change its physiology.

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And the reason for that is to try to give you everything you need in order to run away.

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To save your life, right?

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That was the whole point.

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The whole evolutionary point of our nervous system.

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Having these survival states is that if we were in a true danger, we could be more resourced to get ourselves out of it.

00:13:10.875 --> 00:13:11.235
Right?

00:13:11.715 --> 00:13:14.070
So, unfortunately, though.

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When our physiology changes like that and it stays that way for extended periods of time, then it really impairs a lot of things with our health.

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Our digestion shuts down to a very great degree.

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The immune system becomes imbalanced.

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Hormones become imbalanced.

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Detox shuts down the all kinds of things that my chronically ill patients struggled with, and that I used to struggle with as well.

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And so that's why regulating the limbic system can be so critical to people with chronic health issues to recover.

00:13:49.120 --> 00:13:50.320
But let's tie that into weight.

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So with weight, you know, in a fight or flight reaction, we release a bunch of adrenaline and cortisol.

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Cortisol is our stress hormone that comes from the, uh, adrenal glands.

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And cortisol has a couple different roles in the body, but one of them is to release blood sugar stores.

00:14:12.669 --> 00:14:13.000
Right.

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So if we need to run for our lives, we're going to need a lot of fuel to do that, right?

00:14:18.350 --> 00:14:37.995
So we have fuels stored in our liver at all times and so the liver can then with the signal of cortisol dump a bunch of that glucose into the bloodstream and if that's happening on a regular basis and we're having so much glucose in the bloodstream that we don't We're not actually able to use all of it.

00:14:38.054 --> 00:14:38.404
Right.

00:14:38.625 --> 00:14:40.674
We're not actually running for our lives.

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So we're not actually burning through that glucose.

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Then it will get stored as fat.

00:14:46.496 --> 00:14:49.606
from the liver into the fast horse.

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Into the bloodstream and then if it can't get into the cells, then the body will usually convert it into fat and that fat in particular with cortisol tends to get deposited around the midsection.

00:15:02.322 --> 00:15:17.672
and so what we see in a lot of our clients is as they become better regulated and they stop spending lots of time in fight or flight that the weight just starts to slowly melt off because they're not continually putting more in storage there.

00:15:18.217 --> 00:15:18.798
that makes sense.

00:15:19.509 --> 00:15:23.836
How can you tell if you are in flight all of the time?

00:15:23.846 --> 00:15:28.777
Like, because that's the issue, is to be in fight or flight, um, I assume mostly.

00:15:29.047 --> 00:15:33.336
Fight or, so I assume mostly the flight is the issue.

00:15:33.616 --> 00:15:39.432
I've heard also that it can be fight, flight or freeze, which I don't know how that can affect.

00:15:39.432 --> 00:15:45.336
but, I notice in my life, Things that are going on circumstances that are happening.

00:15:45.907 --> 00:15:49.506
I feel like, Oh, there's so much, but I don't know.

00:15:49.836 --> 00:15:53.466
If I'm in that fight or flight state, does that make sense?

00:15:53.797 --> 00:16:00.682
Because especially I've been studying a lot of in perimenopause and menopause, how it's so important to keep our stress level down.

00:16:00.743 --> 00:16:06.043
I think this is primarily the reason is because of this reaction, but.

00:16:06.878 --> 00:16:12.408
I feel like I'm having a hard time implementing that because I'm not quite sure how to tell.

00:16:12.957 --> 00:16:13.508
right.

00:16:13.548 --> 00:16:15.067
Yeah, that's a great question.

00:16:15.388 --> 00:16:29.937
So for everybody out there, here are some telltale signs that you may be in flight and then we'll talk about fight and freeze because those are the two other physiological states that have nervous system correlates to them.

00:16:30.538 --> 00:16:40.778
So, with flight people, like I said, you're, if you are in flight, you are absolutely going to be anxious, afraid, or very worried.

00:16:41.033 --> 00:16:48.613
Right, so if you are feeling that emotional state, you're in that emotional state, any of those, a lot of the time, you're in flight.

00:16:49.783 --> 00:16:51.153
That's, it's as simple as that.

00:16:51.613 --> 00:17:10.113
The other things to look for though are, if you are, if your, your heart rate is higher than a normal resting heart rate, if your blood pressure tends to be too high, those things both go along with flight or fight, actually, you know, shallow breathing and tight muscles.

00:17:10.643 --> 00:17:14.883
So when we're in fight or flight, the, the muscles all tighten up.

00:17:15.617 --> 00:17:20.998
And so a lot of people say, Oh my gosh, I carry my stress and my tension in my shoulders.

00:17:21.807 --> 00:17:31.758
And there's a very good reason for that because the vagus nerve is intertwined with the nerve that controls these, the trapezius and the SEM here in the neck.

00:17:32.048 --> 00:17:37.127
And so when you go into fight or flight and the vagus nerve shuts down, boom, these muscles go.

00:17:37.593 --> 00:17:40.673
And they contract, but so do the muscles in your whole body.

00:17:41.212 --> 00:18:07.688
And so if you're noticing a lot of tension, a lot of the time, and let's say you're trying things like massage or heating pads or, you know, hot tub, things like that, and you're not really getting relaxation in your muscles for very long, if at all, That's another really good sign that it's because your nervous system is doing that to your muscles, not because you had a local injury or something like that.

00:18:08.097 --> 00:18:15.288
Um, the other thing to think about in terms of chronically tight muscles is magnesium deficiency, but, with, fight.

00:18:15.913 --> 00:18:24.722
All of the physical stuff I just mentioned are telltale signs people tend to notice with fight as well because fight or flight are two sides of the same coin.

00:18:24.932 --> 00:18:27.772
They both are mediated by the sympathetic nervous system.

00:18:28.323 --> 00:18:34.282
So, um, when somebody's in fight, the difference is that they will be in a different emotional state.

00:18:34.593 --> 00:18:44.353
So they'll either be, you know, angry or annoyed, super agitated, irritated, resentful, things like that is what you'll find when somebody's in that state.

00:18:44.972 --> 00:18:53.613
So people can look for, you know, just be more mindful of your emotional state and see where you're hanging out the majority of the time.

00:18:54.182 --> 00:18:58.873
For freeze, the emotional correlate is something along the lines of depression.

00:18:59.538 --> 00:19:12.678
So, a lot of people, um, who are chronically depressed are chronically in a freeze state and a lot of people are getting out of depression permanently by rewiring their limbic system for this very reason.

00:19:13.137 --> 00:19:21.865
So, depression, apathy, lack of motivation, Dissociation can be actually one manifestation of it.

00:19:21.865 --> 00:19:24.204
Usually that's a pretty strong freeze response.

00:19:24.434 --> 00:19:27.505
All these responses are on a gradient, I should mention, too.

00:19:27.505 --> 00:19:36.924
So, you know, you may be mildly angry or you may be severely angry, and that will tell you the degree of the nervous system state that you're in, right?

00:19:36.934 --> 00:19:40.615
So you're in a stronger fight state if you're super angry.

00:19:41.045 --> 00:19:52.730
Um, so that's With freeze, there are different physiological effects because that one's actually mediated by a totally different nervous system pathway called dorsal vagal.

00:19:53.460 --> 00:20:00.920
And so that one, you know, does have effect on every single organ system of the body, but different effects.

00:20:00.920 --> 00:20:06.359
So usually freeze leads to low blood pressure, low heart rate, slower breathing.

00:20:06.569 --> 00:20:10.240
Basically it's in the opposite direction of fight or flight.

00:20:10.519 --> 00:20:10.960
So.

00:20:11.414 --> 00:20:16.315
That helps a lot of my clients to remember it is to just go, Oh yeah, they're kind of opposite from each other.

00:20:17.194 --> 00:20:18.535
So does that help to

00:20:18.884 --> 00:20:19.224
Yeah.

00:20:19.724 --> 00:20:19.964
Yeah.

00:20:19.964 --> 00:20:27.884
I think, I think really just thinking about where you are emotionally during the day, checking in, how am I feeling?

00:20:28.174 --> 00:20:39.595
I think, um, probably because especially for me lately, I've been feeling mostly just overwhelmed with every, like with a lot of Just kind of things I have to do, task list, right?

00:20:39.615 --> 00:20:45.275
Like, task list, out of town, things I've got going, weddings I'm planning, that kind of thing.

00:20:45.625 --> 00:20:47.125
Yeah, absolutely.

00:20:47.394 --> 00:20:49.974
So, I just think, where am I?

00:20:50.005 --> 00:20:52.974
Like, am I, like, this feels stressful to me.

00:20:54.065 --> 00:20:56.785
There must be some amount of healthy stress.

00:20:59.404 --> 00:21:03.865
Um, and I don't feel like I'm in any of these, but I also have a lot going on.

00:21:03.875 --> 00:21:15.795
So tell us about if they're, you know, healthy stress as far as where, what can we experience that just is challenging and good for us it doesn't create problems.

00:21:16.549 --> 00:21:19.619
Yeah, so you know, there's a couple things to say about that.

00:21:19.619 --> 00:21:22.470
One is the duration of time.

00:21:23.039 --> 00:21:29.109
the least amount of time you can spend in these states, the better for your physiology, for your entire body.

00:21:29.829 --> 00:21:33.444
So, it's normal for us to go into these states.

00:21:33.765 --> 00:21:36.494
But how long we spend in them makes all the difference.

00:21:36.964 --> 00:21:52.565
So, you know, if you notice yourself getting really anxious about something, then it's best to, you know, early on, like, acknowledge that and go, Oh, yeah, I'm, I'm working myself up or I'm feeling really anxious about X, Y, Z.

00:21:53.184 --> 00:21:58.474
And then the goal from a neural retraining perspective is to attend to that.

00:21:58.964 --> 00:22:13.325
As soon as you can to basically use your limbic system, teach your limbic system that what is going on that's making you anxious is actually not a life or death threat, because that's what it thinks, right?

00:22:13.335 --> 00:22:15.375
That's what these states were designed for.

00:22:15.704 --> 00:22:27.164
So if your brain is, you know, going into fight about, you know, a deadline you have at work in two weeks, that's not an appropriate use of fight and we need to help ourselves.

00:22:27.305 --> 00:22:28.365
Get out of that.

00:22:28.855 --> 00:22:33.005
But you're right that you know, we can just have a lot going on.

00:22:33.035 --> 00:22:37.115
What that does to our nervous system, though, is going to vary depending on the person.

00:22:37.525 --> 00:22:43.494
So we need to be really honest with ourselves and say, Well, how is my nervous system responding to how much I have going on?

00:22:43.974 --> 00:22:44.365
Right?

00:22:44.384 --> 00:23:02.039
And and to just If it is not responding well, if it's overwhelmed and manifesting that is fight, flight or freeze, then we, you know, want to attend to that and do something with that early on so it doesn't just keep affecting our physiology for an extended period of time.

00:23:02.650 --> 00:23:07.309
The other thing is that, you know, with these nervous system states, there are hybrid states.

00:23:07.789 --> 00:23:08.944
So, you know.

00:23:09.105 --> 00:23:17.904
The survival states, as we've talked about, are fight or flight and freeze, but we also have this, uh, healing state that we want to be in.

00:23:17.934 --> 00:23:18.994
Ideally...

00:23:19.609 --> 00:23:27.089
90 percent of the time or more, so that if that helps people kind of know what the goal is for health, that's what it is.

00:23:27.420 --> 00:23:33.329
So we want to see you spending over 90 percent of the time in rest, digest and heal, right?

00:23:33.549 --> 00:23:44.039
And that nervous system state, as we know, is conducive to healing, to optimal physiology and pretty much every way for non survival situations.

00:23:44.430 --> 00:23:44.829
Right.

00:23:45.509 --> 00:24:02.869
But when you are in your everyday life, and let's say you are, um, playing a competitive sport, when you're doing that and you're getting worked up competitively, but you're not actually in a state where you're ready to pummel somebody to death, then you are in a hybrid state, right?

00:24:02.869 --> 00:24:12.515
You are in a state where you're You're firing the neurons for rest, digest, and heal, and you're firing the fight neurons at the same time.

00:24:13.105 --> 00:24:18.535
So you can be somewhere in the middle, and that is actually not considered an unhealthy state.

00:24:18.535 --> 00:24:21.275
It's not considered detrimental to our physiology.

00:24:21.464 --> 00:24:28.869
So if you're spending a lot of time like that in, in a play state or a competitive state, That's okay.

00:24:28.960 --> 00:24:29.819
That's normal.

00:24:29.819 --> 00:24:30.380
That's good.

00:24:30.380 --> 00:24:31.200
That's healthy.

00:24:31.700 --> 00:24:37.470
the other, uh, hybrid state is between freeze and safe and social or rest, digest and heal.

00:24:37.470 --> 00:24:39.039
Those are two names for the same thing.

00:24:39.519 --> 00:24:54.240
So, uh, when we're in that hybrid state, it's usually when we're doing something like, being intimate with somebody that we, we love that hybrid state helps us to be still and really be calm and feel safe for intimacy.

00:24:54.900 --> 00:24:56.682
So hopefully that helps a little bit.

00:24:57.102 --> 00:24:57.592
Yeah.

00:24:57.652 --> 00:24:58.061
Yeah.

00:24:58.801 --> 00:25:04.721
Um, so you talked a little bit about some of the things that you do with your clients.

00:25:04.721 --> 00:25:15.231
Is there anything that people can implement on these types of things on their own at home that they might be able to start working a little bit on rewiring?

00:25:15.291 --> 00:25:22.922
It's sounds like it's a little bit similar to what I work with, with teaching people to be aware of their thoughts and feelings and how we rewire those things.

00:25:22.922 --> 00:25:30.471
I just taught a lesson this morning to a client about how to think new thoughts, basically, you know, just, just different ways to do that.

00:25:30.471 --> 00:25:32.551
But I assume your tools are a little bit different.

00:25:32.551 --> 00:25:34.467
Can you tell us some of those introductory things?

00:25:34.836 --> 00:26:06.511
Yeah, so, um, the tools are definitely different, the typical approach to psychology has been to try to go through thoughts to change feelings, and that is a valid approach, however, it's not the most potent approach, So this approach that we use that really rewires the limbic system uses, feeling or state change to teach the limbic system to do something new, not cognitive or conscious thought change.

00:26:07.102 --> 00:26:13.551
And it, and it's, it's the limbic system or these subconscious parts of the brain, that's how they learn best.

00:26:14.112 --> 00:26:15.842
So that's how we implement it.

00:26:15.842 --> 00:26:19.951
And people can try it out for themselves for totally for free online.

00:26:20.281 --> 00:26:21.692
There are two different.

00:26:22.112 --> 00:26:30.481
Sort of freebies that we have created for people to just get to know what is this even like, you know, and Because a lot of people have never experienced it.

00:26:30.491 --> 00:26:35.172
So one of those you can find at Get wired for wellness.

00:26:35.451 --> 00:26:40.021
com backslash free the other one You can find it get wired for wellness.

00:26:40.261 --> 00:26:41.961
com backslash anxiety.

00:26:42.501 --> 00:26:50.436
And so yeah, those are there's like Um, eight free, uh, neural retraining processes in there of different styles.

00:26:50.446 --> 00:26:52.866
So people can just get a sense of what is this like?

00:26:52.866 --> 00:26:53.527
Do I like it?

00:26:53.527 --> 00:26:54.777
Is it working for me?

00:26:55.047 --> 00:27:00.676
And when people try it, I would suggest that you use it on something that is making you feel stressed or anxious, right?

00:27:00.676 --> 00:27:07.446
So the way that rewiring the brain works is you have to actually activate the neural network that you want to change.

00:27:07.987 --> 00:27:17.176
And so that means that in order to change anything about your stress or anxiety patterning, you need to be feeling some of it when you do one of those activities.

00:27:17.436 --> 00:27:21.346
So the easiest way to do that is to just think about something you're stressed out about.

00:27:21.727 --> 00:27:29.086
And I would suggest you do this with something that's like up to an eight on the intensity scale for you, like zero to 10, you're up to an eight.

00:27:29.567 --> 00:27:33.757
9 or 10 is so intense that a lot of people need help with those things.

00:27:33.767 --> 00:27:36.946
So like big T traumas from your past and things like that.

00:27:37.186 --> 00:27:41.467
Usually you need some help with that, in order to not re traumatize yourself.

00:27:41.696 --> 00:27:47.477
But if it's some kind of stressor that's getting you a maximum up to an 8, then great, go for it.

00:27:47.477 --> 00:27:50.307
You can rewire that on your own quite easily.

00:27:50.788 --> 00:27:51.009
good.

00:27:51.038 --> 00:27:53.209
And are these just like videos or,

00:27:53.409 --> 00:28:05.939
yeah, so there's, educational videos where we really dive deep into what it means to rewire the brain and what all things that can help you with and what really is anxiety.

00:28:05.949 --> 00:28:06.858
How does it work?

00:28:06.858 --> 00:28:11.088
How do we become chronically anxious and then get ourselves out of it?

00:28:11.098 --> 00:28:12.288
All kinds of things like that.

00:28:12.489 --> 00:28:14.219
How do you actually stop panic attacks?

00:28:14.219 --> 00:28:15.808
There's a whole lesson on that.

00:28:16.439 --> 00:28:20.638
So there's that, but then there's the like eight free.

00:28:20.969 --> 00:28:25.509
You know, processes, and those are videos, mostly, I think there's one audio, so.

00:28:26.594 --> 00:28:26.943
Okay.

00:28:26.993 --> 00:28:27.394
Great.

00:28:27.953 --> 00:28:28.203
Great.

00:28:28.203 --> 00:28:30.993
Well, we'll put all those links in the show notes.

00:28:30.993 --> 00:28:35.144
Was there anything else you wanted to add on helping people with this topic?

00:28:35.618 --> 00:28:49.523
Yeah, you know, I would just say that, you know, if you're out there and really struggling with your relationship with food or with weight, I really highly recommend looking down this road of, Of stress, ultimately, because for many people, that's at the root of it.

00:28:49.953 --> 00:28:52.644
Not always, but many people it is.

00:28:52.644 --> 00:28:54.963
And it's something that I think we all need to look at.

00:28:54.973 --> 00:28:58.844
We all have dysfunctional stress patterns that we can improve upon.

00:28:58.844 --> 00:29:03.604
So, you know, it's not actually difficult work either.

00:29:03.673 --> 00:29:09.493
That's one thing that I hear a lot is people go, Oh, I just, you know, this is going to take so long.

00:29:09.493 --> 00:29:11.554
I just can't open that Pandora's box.

00:29:11.554 --> 00:29:12.604
It's going to be hard.

00:29:12.604 --> 00:29:14.173
It's going to be painful, blah, blah, blah.

00:29:14.173 --> 00:29:17.193
It's not, it's nothing like talk therapy.

00:29:17.384 --> 00:29:20.953
You do not leave crying and more upset than when you came.

00:29:21.304 --> 00:29:24.953
Um, and it's, it really can be a very fast process.

00:29:24.963 --> 00:29:29.683
So, you know, suspend, I guess, your, reservations and.

00:29:30.104 --> 00:29:30.743
Check it out.

00:29:30.854 --> 00:29:31.763
You've got nothing to lose.

00:29:31.804 --> 00:29:32.634
It's very safe.

00:29:33.663 --> 00:29:34.064
Okay.

00:29:34.463 --> 00:29:35.403
That's really good to hear.

00:29:35.413 --> 00:29:46.430
Cause when people attempt these kinds of things on their own, I'm glad you qualified, like don't do this with big T trauma, but, yeah, it's nice to be able to have resources for things that we can work on on our own.

00:29:46.440 --> 00:29:47.869
So I really appreciate that.

00:29:48.019 --> 00:29:49.240
And I appreciate you being here.

00:29:49.250 --> 00:29:50.130
So thanks so much.

00:29:50.309 --> 00:29:50.920
Thank you.

00:29:50.930 --> 00:29:51.700
It was my pleasure.

00:29:52.815 --> 00:30:01.515
If this episode has helped you in any way, all I ask is for you to share it, share it with one friend or share it on your social media tag me, and I'll give you a shout out.

00:30:02.134 --> 00:30:08.015
I'd also love for you to leave a five-star rating on apple and Spotify and review the show on apple podcasts.

00:30:08.224 --> 00:30:10.954
Have a great week and as always, thanks for listening to the eat.

00:30:10.984 --> 00:30:11.464
Well think.

00:30:11.464 --> 00:30:12.875
Well live well podcast

Dr. Karen Cureton Profile Photo

Dr. Karen Cureton

naturopathic physician, acupuncturist, and neuroplasticity practitioner

Dr. Karen Cureton is a licensed naturopathic physician, acupuncturist, passionate neuroplasticity practitioner, and co-creator of the Wired for Wellness program.
Through her own journey with complex chronic illness, anxiety, depression, and PTSD as well as from treating hundreds of patients with complex chronic illness, she realized the profound impact that stress physiology has on all aspects of health. By rewiring her brain and rebalancing her nervous system, she was able to free herself from anxiety, depression, PTSD, many physical symptoms and stress patterns. She has since helped many clients do the same with diverse health issues, traumas, and self-sabotaging patterns. Dr. Cureton is now a firm believer that everyone with a chronic mental, emotional, or physical health issue will benefit from neural retraining, and in many cases it is critical to healing.