For Australians, large-scale bushfires, followed by floods were a tragic start to the year. Soon after, news of COVID-19 swept the world, quickly escalating into a global pandemic. Entering unprecedented times, Australia and New Zealand enforced strict lockdown measures that changed life as we knew it. Whilst economies, events and travels plans are still experiencing the after effects, individually, the mental and emotional toll this year has taken also continues to be felt by many.

In the final months of 2020, let’s stop and reflect – how have you felt throughout this year? Understand, that whatever degree to which you felt you were affected by the events of this year, you’ve lived through times of crisis and trauma. Because of this, it’s important to understand what trauma is, and how you can support your body and mind to process and rebuild resilience in response to it.

Defining Trauma

An event becomes traumatic when it overwhelms a person’s nervous system, stress resilience and coping mechanisms, becoming too much for the mind and emotions to process.

For this reason, living through the enormous uncertainty that COVID-19 created is a collective trauma experienced by most across the planet this year. Here, our nervous systems were left reeling as they tried to make sense of something they’d likely never encountered before.

An event becomes traumatic when it overwhelms a person’s nervous system, stress resilience and coping mechanisms, becoming too much for the mind and emotions to process.

How Have You Felt this Year?

From a biochemical perspective, when the brain encounters trauma, it will activate the ‘fight or flight’ response (the sympathetic nervous system) as a way to try and process the event. This response is totally focused on resourcing the body to fight or flee from the threat, shuttling blood and energy to the heart, limbs and lungs, and taking it away from the brain, digestive and reproductive organs. Therefore, our capacity in fight or flight mode to interpret complex emotions, language, thoughts and concepts is actually diminished.

So if you’ve had any moments this year of feeling stressed, anxious, unmotivated, overwhelmed, confused, scattered or forgetful, know this has all been perfectly normal and expected under the circumstances.

Beyond this, our nervous system may enter another stage, called the ‘freeze’ response, where it stops trying to fight or flee and instead tries to trick or confuse a threat by freezing in place. Emotionally, this can present as feeling detached, numb, exhausted and/or disassociated. So if you have felt any of these, this is also normal, and is the result of your brain looking for a coping mechanism.

If you’ve had any moments this year of feeling stressed, anxious, unmotivated, overwhelmed, confused, scattered or forgetful, know this has all been perfectly normal

Returning to Baseline

Once we perceive that a threat or trauma has passed, the nervous system works to cycle back through these stress responses and return to what’s called our ‘rest and digest’ mode (the parasympathetic nervous system). This is where the brain is alert but relaxed, and is allowing all normal and health-promoting functions within the body to occur.

It’s our aim therefore to help the body return to this baseline, where it can begin to process the trauma effectively, build resilience and better cope moving forward.

Releasing Trauma’s Hold

To start you off on this process, here are five recommendations to consider:

1. Solidify the basics. Foundational wellness principles are of enormous benefit during these times, as they help keep the body energised and balanced. Focus on eating plenty of protein and good fats to stabilise your blood sugar, ensure you’re getting at least seven hours of rejuvenating sleep per night, move your body daily (in nature if possible) and avoid excessive consumption of nutrient-depleting sugar, caffeine or alcohol.
2. Utilise resilience-building supplements. Ongoing stress and/or trauma can start to cause negative changes to the structure and function of parts of the brain, resulting in reduced resilience over time. Natural medicines such as magnesium, turmeric and saffron have been shown to combat these changes, helping to protect and repair brain tissue and build resilience.
3. Create a mental health plan. Work with a counsellor, psychologist or psychiatrist who can facilitate you safely processing trauma you have experienced, and provide you with tools to manage and heal from it.
4. Feel your emotions. Allocate yourself time to be purely present with whatever emotions you’re feeling, which can help enormously to process and let them go. Simply describe the feeling, texture or sensation of the emotion, without the mind having to interpret it.
5. Create stillness. Quieting your mind and taking deep breathes during meditation calms an overwhelmed nervous system, helping you return to baseline. Completing this outside in nature can also offer additional stress-reducing benefits.

Your Rebuilding Resilience Team

When processing trauma, it is recommended you seek the support of a Natural Healthcare Practitioner, who can assess your experiences within the context of your entire life’s story and health picture. Playing a supportive role within your wider healthcare team, they can create a prescription using supplement, diet and lifestyle interventions that will assist your nervous system to rebuild resilience. To find your closest Practitioner, click here.

Looking Back to Look Forward

2020 certainly presented us with enormous unseen challenges. To some degree, we all experienced trauma in response to this, and your nervous system would have worked to process and understand this trauma in its own way. Drawing on the supportive tools and Practitioners you require, you can begin to meet and process this trauma, helping your nervous system return to baseline, and head into 2021 feeling empowered and resilient.

Have you ever felt the effects of a disrupted or poor night’s sleep? It’s not uncommon for your concentration, alertness, energy, appetite and mood to be affected the next day. In this “fog” you may find yourself driving straight past your turn off, heading to the vending machine for a 3 pm pick me up, forgetting that key item at the shops, or trailing off mid-sentence with your mind going blank…

While these days may be few and far between for some, for others who suffer with insomnia, the negative side effects unfortunately don’t stop there. Beyond reduced concentration, more serious metabolic and cardiovascular health issues can start to develop when insomnia becomes chronic. These conditions are often harder to notice or even attribute to poor sleep, as they are insidious and develop over longer periods of time.

Let’s explore the reasons why quality sleep is an essential factor for your wellbeing, and discuss natural remedies and tools you can employ to get your sleep (and health) back on track.

When Sleep Dips, Blood Sugar Rises

Whilst we can’t necessarily feel it, testing and research shows our blood sugar levels are hugely influenced by our sleep. In fact, adults reporting five hours of sleep or less per night were 2.5 times more likely to have diabetes compared to those who slept the recommended seven to eight hours per night.

Whilst the exact link between poor sleep and diabetes isn’t definitely clear, it’s suggested that sleep deprivation may lead to increased activity of the sympathetic nervous system (the fight or flight response), which goes on to negatively influence several hormonal pathways that govern our metabolism.

The Heart Aches for Sleep

This fight or flight response is also a main reason why long term sleep issues are associated with cardiovascular diseases such as high blood pressure and heart attack. Here, due to the physical stress poor sleep creates, the body starts to produce elevated levels of ‘stress’ hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline. The corresponding side effects of this are increases in blood pressure, heart rate and contraction, increasing the risk of cardiac diseases.

This was shown in a decade long study, demonstrating five hours of sleep or less per night resulted in a 45% increased risk of heart attack. Another study found that sleep loss can activate inflammatory pathways in the body that are also linked with cardiovascular disease.

A Lack of Zzz’s Cause an Increase in Kg’s

Similarly, when it comes to weight, the more sleep loss you experience, the greater the risk of becoming overweight or obese. It appears a primary reason for this is that dysfunctional sleep increases appetite levels. Specifically, sleep loss was found to decrease levels of our appetite suppressing hormone, leptin, and increase levels of our appetite-stimulating compound, called ghrelin.

This can make us desire more food, and have more difficulty stopping eating, leading us to consume more calories than we need.

Sleep loss was found to decrease levels of our appetite suppressing hormone, leptin, and increase levels of our appetite-stimulating compound, called ghrelin.

Restoring Sleep, Restoring Health

It’s easy to understand why getting a good night’s sleep is so important for a healthy body! Rest assured, if your sleep needs a little TLC, there’s a multitude of natural remedies and lifestyle tools that can help restore a full and restful night’s sleep.

Here are my top four:

1. Light in the morning and darkness at night. Each of us have an inbuilt body clock, called the circadian rhythm. When you are exposed to the sun each morning, your circadian rhythm triggers the production of the stimulating hormone cortisol, and upon nightfall, triggers the sleep-promoting hormone melatonin.However, when we spend most of our time exposed to the artificial lights in our homes, on public transport, in our workplaces and/or by using electronic devices, our bodies miss these environmental queues; causing our circadian rhythm, and hence our sleep, to become disrupted.In particular, the blue light emitted from digital devices, such as phones, tablets, computers and TVs is especially stimulating to your body. This blue light convinces your brain it’s day time and that it is appropriate to be awake and alert! However, many of us use these devices into the evening, which is the exact time we should be winding down and exposing ourselves to gentler lighting, so we can encourage our melatonin to rise and sleep to come easily.Therefore, increasing your exposure to sunlight in the early morning and throughout your day, using candles or yellow/orange coloured lighting in the evening, and turning off the digital devices at least an hour before bedtime will all help to restore your body’s natural, sleep-promoting circadian rhythm.
2. Magnesium can reduce muscle tightness, helping the body relax into a more restful sleep, which is especially useful after a busy day. This vital mineral can also reduce cortisol and increase melatonin levels, and has shown to support the onset of deep sleep cycles, which are essential for your sleep to be restorative and healing.
3. Lutein and zeaxanthin. These antioxidant nutrients known as carotenoids are found naturally within the eye. Supplementing with these can help the eyes to filter and offset the negative effects of blue light, and further improve your circadian rhythm and sleep quality by increasing the production of melatonin in the eye.
4. California poppy. This herb has a long history of being used as a sedative in traditional herbal medicine, with modern research confirming it works via increasing the activity of our principle calming neurotransmitter, called gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). A great antidote for those times you feel too stimulated or stressed to sleep, this herb can be used to help calm your mind and body heading into bedtime.

Increasing your exposure to sunlight in the early morning and throughout your day, using candles or yellow/orange coloured lighting in the evening, and turning off the digital devices at least an hour before bedtime will all help to restore your body’s natural, sleep-promoting circadian rhythm.

Let’s Get Sleepy

Whilst ongoing sleep dysfunction can increase the risk of developing conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and obesity, addressing disruptions to your circadian rhythm will re-establish healthy sleep patterns, having many positive effects on your long-term health. Use the supplemental and lifestyle suggestions shared above to get started, and consider talking to a Practitioner for a holistic plan tailored specifically for getting your sleep back on track. Your blood sugar, heart and waistline will thank you!