TGG024: Covid recoveries and managing stress
Hi friends. What a start to the year. January has always been a difficult month in my experience, filled with body shame (namely, punishing myself for holiday eating) and the pressure of crafting the perfect resolutions to fix my apparent brokenness. The start of this year has been no different. While jarring, the insurrection in our nation’s Capital by white supremacists came at the surprise of absolutely no one who has been paying attention these last four years. We must fight for accountability and reckon with the ugly threats our nation faces. Yet as we approach the month's end, I am hopeful: the same day extremists stormed the capital, Georgia elected a Black man and a Jewish man, proving the power of grassroots campaigns and of truth over misinformation. And yesterday, Joseph R. Biden and Kamala Harris were sworn in, representing America's first female, Black, and South Asian American vice president. We have work to do. But we’re in this together. In the words of Amanda Gorman:
"And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it.
Somehow, we do it.
Somehow, we’ve weathered and witnessed
A nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished."
What’s new
While home for the holidays, my entire family contracted COVID. Like dominos, each day a new person began showing symptoms until all five of us were sick. The virus is as individual as a fingerprint, traveling through our bodies with varying speed and animosity. My symptoms were manageable, with a fever and vomiting being the worst of it. Fatigue, brain fog, night sweats, and other flu-like symptoms came and went unpredictably, and my smell and taste remain nonexistent.
After two weeks of heavy supplementation and other immune-boosting lifestyle interventions, everyone in my family is doing well. My father has been the slowest to recover, which may be due to weaker immune response found in men. I wholeheartedly believe our functional medicine approach to managing the virus helped. Since the moment our home became a sick ward, we followed the regimen below:
Supplements - Multivitamin, vitamin C, vitamin D, zinc, omega3, magnesium, echinacea, and quercetin.
Sleep - Early to bed, no alarms, Do Not Disturb turned on - all the necessary measures to get long, quality sleep. We napped minimally during the day, as older adults, in particular, run the risk of developing blood clots if too much time is spent laying down. If you have a WHOOP, that’s a great way to monitor your rest and ongoing recovery.
Fluids - “Would you like some tea?” came up from behind and took victory over “Who took my phone charger?” for the most frequently asked question in our household, as fluid intake reached an all-time high. Fluids support all of your body’s functions. We rotated constantly among electrolyte water, no-sugar Gatorade, tea, and broth.
Breathwork - Sleeping on your stomach at all times is advised, to avoid fluid setting in your lungs. We regularly laid on our stomachs and practiced controlled breathing. Already part of my normal routine, I continued practicing Wim Hof breathing to rein in stress and quiet anxiety.
Whole, real, unprocessed foods - Our diets during COVID were the healthiest they’d been in months, with alcohol, sugar, and starch immediately cut because they suppress immunity. We barely had appetites but understood colorful, nourishing foods were key to unlocking the vitamins and nutrients our bodies needed. What does food as medicine actually look like? Eating mostly plants and healthy fats (seeds, nuts, olive oil, avocado, fish, ghee, coconut oil), avoiding dairy, drinking green tea, eating ample high-quality protein, slurping down homemade soup (most store-bought soups are loaded with sodium), and showing no restraint when it comes to turmeric, garlic, ginger, and chili pepper.
Isolation - My parents are high-risk, so to manage viral load - a term describing how much of the virus is carried in the body - our doctor advised us to remain isolated from one another and wear masks in common areas.
Movement - Mild movement helps fortify, you guessed it, immune function. I used an app my friend Delaney adores called Down Dog for gentle, customizable yoga flows.
Pulse oximeter - This low-cost medical device calculates how much oxygen is being transported through your bloodstream. Twice a day, we checked for SpO₂ readings of 94 or above.
Connection - Mental health is health. FaceTime friends, text someone to say I love you, lean on your tribe. Reply here if you need someone to talk to - I’ve got you.
I share this information because, even after ten months of COVID clawing its way through our world, when the doctor delivered my positive test results I couldn’t help but stare blankly ahead wondering, “What the f**k should I do now?”
Special thanks to Erin, Emily, and Jimmy for providing medical advice, even after wrapping 12-hour shifts. Thanks to Kira + Sara for your compassion. And to those who prayed, sent flowers, delivered groceries, sent food, and checked in - you have my heart.
Disclaimer: I’m not a doctor. This is not meant to provide medical advice, though we did speak with several health professionals whose advice I included. We are incredibly fortunate to have health insurance and good medical care.
Managing stress: 5 strategies to release stress and improve your health
Back to basics: time for old school TGG content. Today I’m discussing stress, how it changes your body, and short- and long-term strategies for relief. These past few weeks have been the most stressful of my life, with each day bringing the possibility of someone’s symptoms escalating. I have gone through the full arc: first feeling intense stress, then developing stress-induced symptoms ranging from breakouts to brain fog, and finally, learning and implementing strategies to not only manage stress, but make my stress work for me. That is to say, I obsessively use myself as a test subject and would never recommend anything that I have not personally tried and tested.
My therapist talks about “survival mode,” a physiological shift that occurs when our basic needs for safety and protection are threatened. My fellow friends who have experienced trauma like sexual and physical abuse are familiar with this feeling. Energy practitioner John Amaral breaks it down: “When energy starts building up because the body goes into fight-or-flight mode, that means there’s tension building up. The shoulders might start rounding, and the spine starts arching. Your heart rate increases, you start creating cortisol, and then you’re creating an environment of stress. You’re getting ready to fight or run away, or there’s the third option, which is to freeze. We hold it, bind up, and lock down...The body goes, I don’t have the capacity to deal with this right now. The brain goes, I can’t deal with this information, so we’ll just store it somewhere. If you don’t come out of that survival mode, it takes more effort and affects your ability to do work in the world. It takes more energy, you get less work done, and you get less of a sense of ease and fulfillment.”
The Black community is another group that knows this feeling all too well. Activist Natasha March tells BBC: "When you call an oppressed group thugs, what it does is it incites fear. Fear of the other, fear of the immigrants, fear of the unknown. When you have fear you shut down your senses, you don't listen, you don't see, you don't intellectualize. You're on survival mode. And that is a wonderful way to anesthetise a society, so they don't listen to the oppressed group. It's very clever."
Stress has become unavoidable in modern life, with extreme stress disproportionately impacting certain groups. But how we respond to stress ultimately determines whether it controls us. It is a choice we must make every day.
Can you use it in a sentence?
According to clinical psychologist Dr. Melanie Greenberg, stress is defined as “a reaction to environmental changes or forces that exceed the individual’s resources.” There must be an external event (a stressor), as well as a bodily response. Here’s the catch: it is not stress itself, but the perception of stress that determines whether it will make you sick. Let me explain- in 2012, researchers from UW-Madison published a study that found having high levels of stress in your life is *not* linked to premature death. But having high levels of stress and believing it is impacting your health increases the risk of premature death by 43%.
In her guide “How to Be Better at Stress,” Tara Parker-Pope encourages shifting your perception of stress. Rather than seeing stress as something that takes a toll on your health, try to see it as something that “is giving you the strength and energy to overcome adversity.” She gives an example: imagine your heart is beating faster. That could mean a) Stress is increasing your chances of having a heart attack, or b) Your heart is pumping harder and you’re mobilizing your energy stores to prepare for a challenge. Remember, stress developed as a natural response during prehistoric times, firing up your limbic system and flooding you with cortisol and adrenaline, to give you the second wind you needed to escape danger. Stress is an evolutionary adaptation to help us succeed. In her book The Upside of Stress: Why Stress Is Good for You, and How to Get Good at It, Dr. Kelly McGonigal writes, “The best way to manage stress isn’t to reduce or avoid it, but rather to rethink and even embrace it.” If you believe stress makes you stronger, it will.
Your body on stress
TBH today’s newsletter has had enough doomsday energy, so I’ll keep this brief. I’ve mentioned some of the things that happen in the body when we’re stressed: increased heart rate, modulated adrenaline levels, increased insulin, rise in blood pressure. Stress also significantly alters the brain, clouding your thinking. In his TED Talk “How to be calm when you know you’ll be stressed,” neuroscientist Daniel Levitin notes, “One of the things that goes out the window during those times of stress is rational, logical thinking.” It’s why, to put it simply, we’re not our best under stress. We say things we regret and make choices out of line with our values. Long term, the implications are scarier: chronic stress damages the brain’s memory center.
Pls make it stop
Your mind is your most precious asset, and right now it’s probably taxed to the limit. But with the right approach to stress, you can minimize its negative effects and even harness its power to make you stronger. Today I encourage you to set aside some time to take back the wheel. Here are five ideas that might help:
Practice stress (bear with me) Practicing stress (“stress inoculation,” in science lingo), involves regularly exposing yourself to small doses of stress in order to protect yourself from harm when those bigger, more stressful events arise. There are three phases. Phase one: education. Say you are diagnosed with COVID or laid off due to the pandemic. Chat with others who have navigated through it and learn what to expect. Phase two: rehearsal. You can’t rehearse everything, but you can rehearse a speech in front of a friend, practice interview questions in a mirror, or even run a 5k a few days beforehand. Phase three: implementation. You know you can do the thing because you’ve done it before. “Not only will challenging experiences give you more confidence, but the repeated exposure to stressful situations can also change your body’s biological response to stress. Your stress hormones become less responsive, allowing you to better handle stress when it comes,” Parker-Pope writes. To perform well under stress, rehearse the task.
Exercise We all knew this one was coming. I get it- if you’re working remotely, it’s easy for work life to spill into personal time and for exercise to fall by the wayside. But it’s so important to dedicate time each day to move. While exercise cannot eradicate stress, it can help the body recover from its negative effects and heal the mind. Focus on consistency over duration. As anyone who has been within earshot of me within the last year knows, I swear by my daily 20- and 30-minute Peloton strength workouts. Not into lifting? Research shows exercise of any kind has mental health benefits. Bonus points for exercising (responsibly) outdoors - studies across the board show outdoor exercise feels less strenuous, motivates you to go longer, and boosts your mood more so than indoor workouts.
Just...breathe Without knowing it, you probably tighten up and hold your breath or breathe shallow breaths when under stress. Did you know your relaxation nerve, or vagus nerve, runs through your diaphragm? You can activate the nerve by breathing deeply into your stomach. If you’re unsure what I mean, try an exercise my old choir teacher used to have me do: lie flat with your back on the floor, stack a couple books on your stomach, and breathe deeply into your tummy until the books begin to rise and fall. That’s diaphragmatic breathing. The benefits of controlled breathing are endless; there’s reduced stress, increased alertness, and improved immune function, to name a few. Get started with breathwork here. If you’re intrigued by the power of breath, I highly recommend this informative and actionable book by James Nestor.
Let happiness in You are worthy of happiness; open your heart to it. Queen Brené Brown encourages us to write “permission slips,” notes granting you permission to feel or act a certain way. All you need are sticky notes and intentions. Start by asking, “What am I holding myself back from?” and go from there. My notes read “I give myself permission to be happy” and “I give myself permission to love my body (ALL of it).”
Relationships Don’t worry, I’m still dating myself. What I mean by relationships are those with friends, loved ones, members of your community. Recently I saw an article title that read “What are Friends For? A Longer Life,” which sums this point up nicely. Sure, those closest to us can often be the cause of our stress, but they’re also the ones who stroke our backs when we cry and who help us rebuild when we feel broken. My tendency is to retreat in times of stress, worried that taking my mind off the stressor will only make matters worse. Now when that instinct kicks in, I push back, reminding myself that while whatever I’m stressed about likely won’t matter one week, month, or year from now, the people in my life will.
This friendship study involving a big hill, a heavy backpack, and a bunch of college students warms my heart. Parker-Pope explains: “Students were fitted with a backpack full of free weights equivalent to 20 percent of their body weight. They stood at the base of a hill on the University of Virginia campus with a 26-degree incline. Wearing the heavy backpack, they had to imagine climbing that hill and guess the incline. When a student stood alone, he or she tended to guess that the hill was very steep. But when they stood next to a friend, the hill didn’t look as daunting. Overall, students in pairs consistently gave lower estimates of the hill’s incline compared with students who were alone. And the longer the friends had known each other, the less steep the hill appeared.”
Remember to pay the love forward and show up for others as they have shown up for you. And yes, pets absolutely count as supportive relationships.
One more thing - I hold stress in my jaw and shoulders. Notice where you hold your stress, then exhale, and let that shit go.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way.” This month, as I feel the pressure of resolutions and of reaching for unachievable ideals, I remind myself of these words. Every day we are given hundreds of small opportunities to be the person our younger selves would be proud of. What small steps can you take to show up for yourself, and thus show up for your community? Now’s as good a time as ever to start.