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Nov 27, 2019 32 min

63 | 5 Ways to Boost Your Immunity

from Small Steps Hosted by Aimée Suen, NTP

Colder or busier times of year always seem to take a bigger toll on our immune systems. And while getting sick isn't always a bad thing, constantly getting sick isn't helpful to our bodies or living the rest of our lives. This episode covers 5 ways you can boost your immunity that can also be helpful in your everyday life as well. Small Steps in the Show: Take a moment to reflect on which of these you feel you're doing well on and others that might be helpful to incorporate Choose 1-2 to incorporate Be clear on how you want to incorporate those and how often See what might need to adjust to make these happen Know that you're doing your best and give yourself kindness and compassion Mentioned in the Show: Buy my Enamel Pin F.lux Blue blocking glasses Small Steps Podcast #58 with Kayla Nedza Small Steps Podcast #62 with Jessie Mundell Get the full show notes here! Follow Aimee on Instagram | Facebook | Pinterest Sign up for the Wellness Wednesdays Newsletter Interested in working with Aimee? Find out information here.

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63 | 5 Ways to Boost Your Immunity

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Welcome to the Small Steps Podcast. I'm your host, Amy Soon. I'm a nutritional therapy practitioner, blogger at Small Eats, author of Not at My Dastal Lunch, designer, and avid learner. In my nutrition practice, I help you cut through the health and wellness noise to find what works for you.

This podcast is here to educate, inspire, and empower you to grow, try new things, and live a life you truly feel good about once in all seven at a time. Each episode has small steps that you can try and see how they work for you. You can find all the show notes, small steps, and other episodes at small-eats.com. Slash podcast.

Remember, the materials and content within this podcast are intended as general information only. They are not to be considered a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Hello there. Welcome back to another episode of the Small Steps Podcast.

I am so glad you're here. The week that this podcast is going out is the week in the United States of Thanksgiving. And so I want to say if you are headed to or going to be with friends and family, I hope you have a great time. If you are also not going to be with family, or maybe you're just going to be friends with the first time, sending you lots and lots of love and support, and hope that you are able to, no matter who you're spending this week with, having a great time, enjoying the food that you want and feeling supported by, the people that you want to be supported by.

It is episode 63. And this show, we are talking five ways to boost your community. I have heard many times that the holidays is of time where people tend to get more sick, it's darker, it's colder. So we're going to talk about that.

I think it would be very timely for this time of year. Just before we start the show, just a reminder, if you love the show, please consider reading and interviewing it on iTunes, and also sharing with your friends if you like it. And you want to talk more about it, or just share it with other people. I would love for you to share it on social media, and tag me at small underscore Eats.

Also, something that is pretty cool that I'm doing, just for the next few days, is because this is like pre-Black Friday. This is Black Friday week, it's not pre-Black Friday, it's Black Friday going on. And my enamel pin, healthcare is human right. I'm going to do something different and something fun, and I think it will be really awesome.

Usually when you buy the pin, $2 of every sale goes to the ACLU and the El-Hammer Fund. Starting today on Wednesday the 27th, so if you're listening to this live, hi, thanks for being a live listener. Until giving Tuesday, which is December 3rd, I am going to up the portion of the proceeds to the ACLU and the El-Hammer Fund. So more proceeds will go to the ACLU and the El-Hammer Fund, and you or your loved one will get a really awesome pin that had even more impact than it did before.

Head over to small-eats.com-shop and pick yours up now. This deal is only going to last for that period of time. So for the 27th, November 27th, until December 3rd, that Tuesday, that's when the promo is gonna apply. And then after that, the proceeds will go back down to $2.

The price doesn't change, it's just the impact of your purchase goes further. So if you're into that, head to the show notes and go check it out. Five ways to a community. This is the time of year where a lot of things happen, people can get sick and none of us like to get sick, but I do wanna say that's not bad to get sick.

So the thing that we often think about our immune system responds to stuff by getting sick, by having some kind of reaction. So when you get sick, that's showing you that your body is protecting you. Something that we learned when I was in school for nutrition is that if you don't get sick for a long period of time, like I'm talking like several years, there might be something going on, it could be fine. And that could be an indication that your body isn't quite responding and the ways that it could to protect you.

So your cold and flues are a response to show that your body actually is fighting off and it needs to bite off. So I wanted to say that to you just so that you know that. And so because there's usually lots of like, I'm cold, I have a cold, I have a flu, like everything's terrible, like my body is so run down. If you constantly get colds and flues, that could be a sign that your body needs to make sure support.

And if you have colds or flues maybe like once or twice a year, that's totally normal. That's your body doing what it needs to do and keeping you safe and your immune system is sending you the message like, hey, I'm still functioning all the way. I'm gonna protect you from these things. So it's a response.

I know that if you get sick a lot or in general, if you just wanna feel like you can handle things more or if you know that one small cold can really knock you out, let's figure out some ways to boost your overall immunity. So I've got five ways for you. And I do wanna say none of these things are extremely like spectacular. I know if you look up a bunch of things on the internet, there are so many things that are like, take this thing and do this and take a supplement regimen.

And I'm gonna say that while sometimes supplement regimens and our particular supplements can be helpful and could probably shorten when you are sick, the lick d'etoration or help you heal, I always think it's better to zoom out and look at the bigger picture and what is going on in the bigger picture and what are the lifestyle things that you might need to shift or make sure that you have in place so that overall this instance it doesn't happen as much or doesn't knock you on your ass as hard. All of the important things to think about. So yeah, there are really specific things that I'm not gonna talk about here that can be helpful for your immunity, like specific things. Those aren't always accessible to everybody and making sure that these bigger things are in place is beneficial to you overall.

Because it's not just about your immunity too, it's about your overall health. There's not gonna be any like wonderful, like you should go to the store right now and buy this one thing and everything's like, you know, that's not really how we go here. And I just wanted to say that in case you're new to the show, thinking that we're gonna have some like really specific tincture or go buy the supplements and that's how we do it here. First way to boost your immunity.

Eating lots of fruits and vegetables and being mindful of your sugar and alcohol intake. I know that being mindful of your sugar and alcohol intake can really easily, for some people in some of their tendencies, can really move into, fixing on it and being too aware of it and potentially having some hyperbigilance or some added stress about that. So I do wanna put that out there and say that that could be activating for people and for a lot of people, just that added level of awareness can be helpful. Not in the ways that I'm telling you, you should restrict, but I'm saying that there is a correlation between too much sugar and alcohol and too much stress and not quite enough fruits and vegetables on your immunity.

Because, fun fact, 70 to 80% of your immune system is in your gut. It's in your gut lining. And sometimes when you tip the scales and you have too much sugar and too much alcohol over a prolonged period of time or like a higher concentration, that affects the lining of your gut. Your gut has these little villi in it, like little fingers.

That sounds strange, but it's true. Like it has little villi inside the lining of your gut and the more the balance of your bacteria might be off or you have too big of chunks of food or maybe you have things that's just like, it's just too much the balance tips. The health of your villi, they shrink or they get really small when they get unhealthy and that's when other things can have the domino effect and that can affect your immune system. If you're making sure that you're eating a good amount of produce and making sure that you're not just, and this is a very dramatic thing.

Like you're not just main lining sugar at all times and like drinking lots and lots of alcohol, these are something to think about. I'm not saying that you should cut it out completely. Again, I'm just saying to be aware of it, especially if there are other signs and symptoms, like if you know that you're maybe a more sensitive sugar or if you just don't like the feeling of it after a certain point, something helpful to keep in mind. Also around this time of year, so if you are not listening to this show when it comes out on recordings around a holiday time of year and that's usually when in general, more homemade sugar retreats are available or candy is marketed more or when you're going to holiday gatherings, it's like, oh, have the egg not gonna put, you know, a generous thing of brandy or rum or whatever you want or like have this mold wine or all this stuff.

There are more instances around the holiday when the scales get tipped from your normal everyday diet diet isn't what you're eating than usual. So making sure you're getting lots of fruits and vegetables and being aware of your alcohol intake. Also, collagen and bone broth help strengthen your gut. The easiest way to get collagen is from animal sources.

So if you're getting it from bone broth, which will be helpful, or if you're getting it from this, the food that you're eating, like the animal-based protein that you're eating, if you can, you can get the collagen powder that you like make it into drinks or whatever, if that's accessible to you. There are foods that naturally boost collagen, a lot of them are fruits and vegetables, so you can have things that are high in vitamin A and vitamin C that are co-factors for making collagen. More reasons why getting lots of fruits and veggies is helpful and you don't have to like overdo it, but just like step back from it, see how much you're eating and then a source of veggies and see if, oh, we're making it a little bit more here, making it a little bit more there, doesn't have to be something that you stress out a lot about. The second way to boost your immunity, stay hydrated.

So water plays so many important functions in your body. So you're moving liquids through, you're making sure that while you're eating like the waste goes through properly, it keeps your skin and other organs hydrated, like your eyes and your lungs, it's very, very important. And we know this and still it can be very easy for a lot of people to have a hard time drinking enough water. Also like what is drinking enough water?

Drinking enough water as a bare minimum, this is a suggestion, it might be more for some people, is take through your body weight, cut it in half and drink that in ounces. So if you're 200 pounds, you'll need to have a minimum, like a starting point of 100 ounces of water. Also it's important to remember that you're constantly using up all this water that you're drinking from actually like going to the bathroom, from breathing, there's water in your breath and sweating, that's another one. And though it might be a colder time of year, when we're talking about this, you're still gonna sweat.

Your body's still gonna use water to maintain some level of homeostasis and especially if you're in a cold weather place and you're doing things like shoveling the sidewalk or moving from place to place and you're wearing a lot more things and it's keeping you warm and that's what you're also sweating for a little bit. Also something to keep in mind is you're gonna need to add more water with each glass or cup of booze, tea or coffee. So coffee and tea are diuretics, which means they draw water out of the body. So if you drink more of that, you're gonna need to have more water to add back in.

At least for me, when it's cold, I want to have lots of warm drinks and usually those warm drinks for me is tea. So that is something to keep in mind. Some signs that you might need to more water is if you get a lot of headaches or if your eyes feel really dry or your skin, like a lot of people this time, the other skin feels very dry. Getting water would be really, really helpful for that and it's gonna keep things moving.

If you have some difficulty drinking water, not because it's like tastes weird, but you're just like, ugh, I just can't. I don't have to figure it out. So now that you know a minimum, like a starting point for your body weight analysis, it can be helpful to figure out if you have one or two particular glasses or water bottles that you drink from all the time. Make sure that you're carrying it around with you.

Make sure you figure out, okay, I always drink from this 20 ounce water bottle or glass. Therefore, if I need to drink 100, I need to drink five full ones of these throughout the day. So keeping track of that, being more aware of that, and figuring out other ways to integrate water into your day. Also, you can get water and hydration from food, you know, watermelon, cucumbers, tomatoes, things like that.

A lot of these things are in season right now. More things for water, more incentives for water for sure. And again, this is not gonna be a perfect thing that you need to achieve at all times, but if you know, like if you can feel it in your body or you can see it in your skin, might be something that is helpful. The third thing, getting some sleep.

This is like always a, oh yeah, I know I should do it, but I don't. Well, sleep allows your body to rest and repair and it's really essential for making sure that all the processes in your body are going and doing all the things. Also, if we don't go with enough sleep, bad things can happen. Honestly, like what is reality?

And like making sure that your emotions are regulated and that you're not like popping off, you're like, what did you say? All helps when you get enough sleep. There's no magic number. And I know that people have said so many times that like some relative or some person in their family or someone that they know got like three hours of sleep and they lived their best life is like, I don't know, we don't really know that.

And I think that less than six hours is a bit like, ooh, I don't know about that. Try an experiment and see what getting seven hours of sleep feels like, which is whatever you're getting now. So just try that and see how that works for you because the number will be individual for you. And most people can figure out like, oh yeah, I need at least this much sleep or things kind of go a little bit sideways.

The quality of sleep is important too. So sleeping in a darker room helps tell your body like, yes, it is in fact nighttime, it is in fact time for me to sleep. So a lot of times the environments that we sleep in are actually very bright. Like yeah, you turn off the lights, but they're like the fire alarm in the ceiling or maybe you've got some displays like your clock and it's very bright or you've got a bunch of LED lights in there.

Or maybe you're looking at your phone or before bed, there's a lot of light. Or if you go to bed with a TV on, there's a lot of light and it's very confusing to your brain to tell it to like, oh yeah, it's nighttime, time to slow down, time to shut down. Blue light too close to bed also affects your sleep cycles. So there are many things you can do to improve the quality of your sleep.

So try to sleep in a dark room as possible as you can. That could be installing blackout curtains, that could be covering up or moving certain lights, like the little LED lights, you can put tape over them or something like that from your room. If that's not something you can do right now or if you know that you travel all the time, an eye mask would be very helpful. Before that blue light too close to bed, install flux on your computer.

So that's something that for all computers, you can install it, you tell it what time you go to bed and it will change the light of your screen. Again, if you are working on something that requires looking at color or you're watching something, the color will shift and that's okay. You can also buy blue blockers on Amazon. So that blocks the blue light a little bit.

So if you're watching something at night, you're watching television at night, that can help a little bit. If you have a bunch of lights on, if you're one of those like, let's turn on all the lights. Consider turning some of those off and keep it necessary ones on for sure. But if there's like certain lights around that you're like, hmm, there's a lot of lights on.

Turn them off if you could or if you want to. Maybe you use candles because they have a more orangey light instead of a blue or light, or maybe get some salt lamps and use those too. That can just be calming in another thing to tell your brain, all right, it's time. We're turning down.

So you can actually get that quality sleep. The fourth way to boost your immunity, the little bit more difficult for some people and so important, it's such an important thing to feel more confident around, is listening to your body and letting yourself rest. So around the winter time of year, there's holidays which you've been talking about a lot and there can be, it can be easy to up the activity level of everything, to go all the places to do all the things and in combination with potentially not, taking the best care of yourself or running around or doing a lot of things. Like if you're not giving yourself the rest that you need, your body's not gonna be able to have all the tools that it needs to fight off infection.

So yeah, you might get sick. So it's important to give yourself space even if it is a busy time of year, to see how you're doing, how things are. If things are really, really busy, check in with yourself. Do you need to take a break?

Do you maybe need to cancel some plans or say no to some plans so that you can really give yourself what you deeply, deeply need, which is rest. And if you know that you're already feeling tired and if you maybe are the person, like I have done many times, you're like, oh no, I'll just get it done and then I'll be easier. If you're not at quote 100%, whatever 100% is for you, maybe if you're not even at like 80% and you just keep pushing, it's gonna take potentially a lot longer. It's gonna feel so much harder and like moving through slow motion molasses in the winter time, like, oh, I can't do it.

Just gonna be so much harder. And then the need for rest is gonna be so much bigger. Then if you just were like, you know what? I'm really tired.

I'm gonna rest and do that later when you feel more refreshed and more like you have all of your resources and do all the things. Take a minute. I know it's difficult, but take a minute. Just pause.

And if you feel, or if you feel a little bit of like, hey, hey, I'm clogged tired. Like tugging at you like if it's a little kid, like tugging at your hand or whatever. Hey, can I rest? See if you can do that.

See if you can let yourself rest and know that your body's very smart. Your body will tell you if you're able to like listen to it and give yourself the space to listen to it and understand what your specific signs are. Like, yeah, I'm tired. If you can listen to that and tune into that, then give yourself the permission to give yourself rest.

I know it can be difficult, especially in this capitalist pro hustle, blah, blah, blah, let's go go go, let's do this, rest is for the week. All that bullshit. Like that narrative can be very big and can be applauded and just like put all over the place. I feel like in the past few years, there's also been this growing movement to like rest and opt out of those things and to do what you really need to do for you and not necessarily to murder yourself to do all the things and like outwardly look glamorous if you're just gonna be super tired and have to retreat into a cave of rest for like three months and then reemerge and be like, all right, I'm here.

What did I miss? Listen to your body and let yourself rest. And that can be a lot of things depending on what the situation is in your life. So maybe you say no to obligations or events if you really want to rest.

Knowing that, because there can be a lot of scarcity that comes up around that, like, oh, well, what if this never happens again? It was with your friends. Like your friends are still gonna be your friends, even if you say no, like one or two times. So know that that's a bit of like scarcity.

That's a bit of fear driving those motivations. If you know, like we've talked about on the show a few times, if you know that there, this is a very important gathering maybe the people that are there, you don't get to see them very often or they're older and you're not sure, honestly, like how much longer they're gonna be with you. Maybe that is the time when you're like, all right, I'm gonna go to this thing, I'm gonna say yes. Knowing that, knowing that you're doing these things, knowing that you're making these commitments, how can you maybe before or leading up to give yourself the space to have that rest before so that when you go to that event, you're fully present and you're the way that you wanna show up to spend time with people that you care about.

Knowing that you have this thing, how can you prepare in any capacity to do that? Maybe you cut something short before this thing so that you can rest, maybe you take a nap, maybe you make sure that other things have moved around. You can make the things possible, the whole myth that you can do it all, like, you don't need to do it all. And maybe you can help, listen to your body, let yourself rest, maybe say no to obligations, maybe shift other things around, give yourself that like buffer time so that you're able to fully show up when you do say yes to events and know that the people that you want in your life will understand if you say, hey, I love you, I really wanna show up to your thing and I am very exhausted and I need to rest.

And people who will really understand and care about you will be like, oh yeah, I totally get it. Please rest, let's figure out another time and meet later, lay yourself rest. It's okay, it might feel really weird, but it's okay, lay yourself rest. And the last one related is do things that help you relieve stress and tension in your life.

So stress has a lot of powerful effects on your body and can mess with a lot of your body's processes that help keep things going and keep things in your homeostasis. So when we hold on to stress too long also, which is something that Kayla, Nedza, and I talked about in a previous show, which you can go listen to all the link that in the show notes, if you hold on to stress too long and it just, you're in a constant state of stress in whatever form that it is, that starts to show up in other ways in your body because your body's trying to tell you, just like before, like tugging on your sleeve and be like, hey, hey, something's wrong here? So I'm just gonna start doing all these things to show you that something's wrong here. And a lot of times people ignore it, but I think you're really helpful.

If you don't ignore it, because you get in situations like Kayla and I, where we just got very burned out and got a bunch of things. What are some ways that you can relieve that stress and tension? Even if you can't add something every day, if you can add things that you know are very helpful for you to relieve some of that, that's gonna help it from building up and potentially turning it into something where you're like, oh no, we've got a bit too far here and like moving it back. Also wanna say that that doesn't necessarily need to be exercised because exercise, rigorous movement is putting stress on your body.

So just like what we talked about in the episode with Jesse Mondell that just came out last week, episode 62, how can you figure out some ways to relieve some stress and tension that don't just depend on exercise, how are some other ways to regulate our self-suit? We're gonna list out a bunch of stress and it's for you. And you could have your own, but here it is something to get your brain going. So maybe you have a moment of silence in the morning where it's just you and you're thinking about stuff.

If meditation feels like too far off for you, maybe it's just a moment of silence, maybe it is meditation, maybe you journal, maybe you go for a walk, maybe you connect with people that you love and that kind of relieves the stress and the tension because connection and being heard and seen by other people is just as important for figuring out how to regulate our stress, especially if that stress is related to something very specific, then always doing things on your own. So you wanna mention that too. Maybe it's going exploring somewhere, whether that's like you drive a little bit out of your town and maybe there's some like really nice nature out there, or it's going to a fun neighborhood or seeing some cool street art or something that's exciting to you. Reading a book or watching a TV show that's something you enjoy, creating something, whether that's a digital, physical, food, anything, drawing or coloring that can be really relaxing for people, maybe giving back in your community is a way to relieve stress and again, connecting with people, kind of stepping outside of yourself and connecting and giving back to others.

Taking naps, always a fan of taking naps, that can be a nice way to just like, boom, shut it down, reset it. Like I mentioned earlier, cooking a meal, maybe cooking a meal with someone that you love and care about or maybe cooking a meal for someone that you love and care about and then anything else that you find restful, fun or joyous or enjoyable, anything like that, see how you can add more of those either throughout your day or your week or your month because the more that you have that practice of relieving stress in ways that don't add more stress to your body, the more that you're gonna not constantly be in a state of low level stress and you're not gonna have things that are constantly hijacking other processes in your body and immunity and health can definitely be one of those. So, small steps for the show, take a moment to reflect on how you feel about all these things and maybe something that you're like, oh yeah, I'm doing really good at that and maybe something that you're like, nah, I'm not doing as well, I don't feel like I'm doing as well, maybe these are some things I wanna incorporate. In figuring out at least one to two to incorporate, if you feel like you have more capacity to incorporate more, you can, but we're all about small steps here.

So, if you just wanna choose one or two, that is also very nice. Be clear on how you wanna incorporate them and how often you wanna incorporate them. So again, the more specific you are, the easier it's gonna be to do these things, whether that's every day or every week or however often you need to do them. Also, it's important as you're adding things to see what might need to adjust because we're not all about doing all the things here.

So, what are some things that might need to change? If you need to go to bed earlier and get more sleep, what's gonna adjust as an impact to be going to bed earlier? Do you need to adjust your schedule at all? Do you need to be more mindful of what time it is to go to bed earlier?

There are things that are going to be impacted by you changing some things. And so, what are the impacts to that and how might your schedule need to change? Also, maybe you need to get some support. Maybe you need to get some help from the people in your life to make that space happen.

That's also not a bad thing to ask for help. Know that you're doing your best to. Know that even if you do get sick or if you maybe you are feeling tired, know that you're doing your best and give yourself lots and lots of kindness and compassion because the more you beat yourself up from not doing these things or for not doing these things, quote, good enough or well enough. Guess what, you're adding more stress than that's not as helpful.

And I know that for some of us, the judgment muscles and the beating yourself up muscles or super fucking buff and our kindness and compassion muscles aren't as buff, which is why I always bring it up as a reminder so that you can flex those muscles a little bit more and give yourself more kindness and compassion. So usually after the small steps, we wrap the show, but I did want to say if you do get sick or you are sick while you're listening to this, important things to remember, again, they seem basic, but a lot of times in the society is very difficult for us to do these things. Rest, if you are sick, please rest. Please don't worry about going to the gym if you are a gym goer, focus on your recovery.

There's a lot of times there's this like scarcity and it's like, oh my God, if I don't go to the gym, like all these things, I'm gonna lose all my gains, I'm gonna lose all my progress, already in a impaired immunity state, potentially the worst it could get. So just let yourself rest. The gym's still gonna be there when you get back. If you need the gym, like all cabs need and you're like holding on to it really tightly, maybe that's something worth looking at.

Why do you need the gym so much? Also drink lots of water because you're gonna keep needing to move things to the body depending on what kind of sickness you have, giving yourself the extra hydration moving things through gonna be really important and eat nourishing foods, getting those veggies in, getting that broth in, that soup, the thing about soup that is like so great is like, you get all the nutrients that you need, get lots of minerals, and you get that bone broth that's helping things going on, or that broth in general, that's helping things going on. See what you can do to just let yourself rest in general, even if you're not a gym goer, don't beat yourself up about how could I have done this? I got sick, I got sick again, or feeling guilty about not being able to do certain activities, or gonna work because you're sick, it's okay.

Let yourself be sick, your body's telling you like, all right, need to rest, need to recover, I'm doing what I need to do to keep you safe by having some immune response and getting sick. Enjoy the rest, because I feel like it doesn't often. We don't get enough rest these days. And so if your body kind of forces you to rest, like that's okay, lean into that, you can do that.

If you do get sick, rest, drink lots of water, you got some nourishing foods, do something relaxing. If you're not just sleeping all the time, if you are just sleeping all the time cool, your body's taking care of itself, letting yourself sleep. Also, I wanna say if you're more of a natural, leaning, quote, healthy living person, and going to the doctor makes you a little bit weird, because you don't like the stuff that they might give you, go to the doctor, please, please go to the doctor. And if they give you something to help with the bacteria, or help with the illness, it's okay.

If you are constantly sick, that might be something bigger to the gap, but if you're getting sick two or three times a year, and you get some medicine, or maybe you got some kind of infection, and they give you that Z-pack or whatever, you're like, I don't know, it's okay, help your body out. And then afterwards, we're doing, you can do things to like, all the other things that you're gonna be doing will help your body. What I see often, and something that I have been moving through over the past few years, is like, when you see all the things, all the health related things, there can be this tendency to not wanna go to the conventional doctor anymore, and to only wanna see like holistic doctors, pro tip, especially in America, holistic doctors are really fucking expensive, and usually aren't covered by insurance, so people are like, oh, I'm just not gonna go to the doctor. Please go to the doctor.

If you need to go to the doctor, including when you are sick, because there can be things that can help that process, like the sickness process can just make it a little bit easier, to give your body the support that it needs, and there are always exceptions to the rule, or maybe there might be things that you feel like, I don't know if I wanna take all this medicine that you just gave me, maybe I'm just gonna let this thing ride or whatever, but if you feel like you need to take it, you wanna take it, there's no shame here. Go to the doctor, here what they have to say. Ask as many questions as you want, you can make the decision, and if you decide to take medication, that's fine too. So I wanted to also say that, because there can be a tendency for people to be like, no, now that I know things, screw it, I'm not gonna go to the doctor, I'll figure it out with all these homeopathic remedies and tinctures, and while some of those can work, sometimes just take the time, it's okay, if you're especially if you're only taking it like a few times a year, it's gonna be fine, I promise.

So small steps just to put a bow on it, take a moment to reflect on the things, these five things, if you're doing it in these well, cool. If you feel like you need to incorporate some of them more, also cool, choose one or two to incorporate, be clear on how you wanna incorporate those and how often be very specific. See if there are other things that you might need to adjust in your life to make them happen, different scheduling things, different planning things, maybe you need help from someone, getting help is totally fine by the way, and know that you're doing your best, and please give yourself lots and lots of kindness and compassion, and if you do get sick, please rest, drink lots of water, eat nourishing foods, if you need to go to a doctor and get the support that you need there. All right, that is the show for this week, and remember, until next week, you can do it once more seven a time.

Frequently asked questions

How long is this episode of Small Steps?

This episode is 32 minutes long.

When was this Small Steps episode published?

This episode was published on November 27, 2019.

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Yes, a full transcript is available for this episode. You can read the complete transcript on the episode page.

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